The guidelines in this article will help you successfully send and deliver email to people who have personal Gmail accounts. This article was previously called Bulk sender guidelines. Show
Important: Starting November 2022, new senders who send email to Google Gmail accounts must set up either SPF or DKIM. Learn more. Following the recommendations in this article helps ensure that your messages are successfully delivered to Gmail accounts. These recommendations help prevent Gmail from limiting sending rates, blocking messages, and marking messages as spam. These guidelines are for anyone who sends email to Google Gmail accounts. A Gmail account can be any one of these account types:
Google Workspace: If you use a Google Workspace account to send large volumes of email, review the Spam and abuse policy in Gmail. The policy is part of the Google Workspace Acceptable Use Policy. In this article
Issues not solved in this articleThis article doesn't have solutions for these issues:
Follow best practices for sending to Gmail accountsTo reduce the chances that messages from your domain are sent to spam or blocked by Gmail, follow the general best practices in this section.
Occasionally, legitimate messages might be marked as spam. Recipients can mark valid messages as not spam, so future messages from the sender should be delivered to their inbox. Recommendations for email providersGoogle and Gmail don’t accept allowlist requests from email providers. We can't guarantee messages sent by email providers will pass Gmail’s spam filters. If you use a third-party email provider to send email for your domain:
If you use a domain provider but you manage your own email, we recommend you:
If you’re a third-party email provider: When clients use your service to send email, you’re responsible for their sending practices. We recommend taking these steps to help manage your clients’ sending activity:
Set up email authentication for your domain (required)We recommend you always set up email authentication for your domain. Authenticated messages:
Set up email authentication for each of your sending domains at your domain provider. Follow the domain provider's instructions for setting up authentication. To get detailed information about authentication and how it protects your organization's email, visit Prevent spam, spoofing & phishing with Gmail authentication. Important: Starting November 2022, new senders who send email to personal Gmail accounts must set up either SPF or DKIM. Google performs random checks on new sender messages to personal Gmail accounts to verify they’re authenticated. Messages without at least one of these authentication methods will be rejected or marked as spam. This requirement doesn’t apply to you if you’re an existing sender. However, we recommend you always set up SPF and DKIM to protect your organization’s email and to support future authentication requirements. SPFSPF prevents spammers from sending unauthorized messages that appear to be from your domain. Set up SPF by publishing an SPF record at your domain. The SPF record for your domain should reference all email senders for your domain. If third-party senders aren't included in your SPF record, messages from these senders are more likely to be marked as spam. Learn how to set up your SPF record to authorize all email senders for your domain. DKIMReceiving servers use DKIM to verify that the domain owner actually sent the message. Turn on DKIM for the domain that sends your email. Important: Sending to personal Gmail accounts requires a DKIM key of 1024 bits or longer. DMARCDMARC lets you tell receiving servers what to do with messages from your domain that don’t pass SPF or DKIM. Set up DMARC by publishing a DMARC record for your domain. To pass DMARC authentication, messages must be authenticated by SPF or DKIM. The authenticating domain must be the same domain that's in the message From: header. When you set up DMARC, you can then optionally set up BIMI to add your brand logo to messages sent from your domain. Follow best practices for email subscriptionsSend email to engaged users onlyOnly send email to people who want to get messages from you. They’re less likely to report messages from your domain as spam. If messages from your domain are often reported as spam, future messages are more likely to be marked as spam. Over time, spam reports can lower your domain’s reputation. Learn about your domain’s reputation with Postmaster Tools. Make it easy to subscribeTo help ensure your recipients are engaged:
Make it easy to unsubscribeAlways give your recipients a way to unsubscribe from your messages. Make unsubscribing easy. Letting people opt out of your messages can improve open rates, click-through rates, and sending efficiency. Here are some recommended unsubscribe methods:
Advanced: Set up one-click unsubscribeIf you’re familiar with managing email and setting up custom message headers, you set up one-click unsubscribe for Gmail messages. Include one or both of these headers in your outgoing messages: List-Unsubscribe-Post: If you include both headers, Gmail uses the one listed first. When a recipient unsubscribes using one-click, you receive this POST request:
Learn more about List-Unsubscribe headers in RFC 2369 and RFC 8058. Avoid these practices
Monitor affiliate marketersAffiliate marketing programs offer rewards to companies or individuals that send visitors to your website. However, spammers can take advantage of these programs. If your brand is associated with marketing spam, other messages sent by you might be marked as spam. We recommend you regularly monitor affiliates, and remove any affiliates that send spam. Format messages for successful deliveryThese message formatting guidelines increase the likelihood that Gmail delivers your messages to the inbox, not to the spam folder:
Increase sending volume slowlyWhen increasing sending volume, keep in mind:
If you send large amounts of email, we recommend you:
These factors affect how quickly you can increase sending volume:
Follow recommended email server practicesFollow these best practices for managing email servers that send to Gmail accounts. Verify the sending server PTR recordImportant: The sending IP address must match the IP address of the hostname specified in the Pointer (PTR) record. PTR records are also called Reverse DNS records. Your sending IP address must have a PTR record. PTR records verify that the sending hostname is associated with the sending IP address. Every IP address must map to a hostname in the PTR record. The hostname specified in the PTR record must have a forward DNS that refers to the sending IP address. Check for a PTR record with the intoDNS tool. Monitor the reputation of shared IP addressesA shared IP address (shared IP) is an IP address used by more than one email sender. The activity of any senders who uses a shared IP address affects the reputation of all senders for that shared IP. If you use a shared IP for sending email, other senders’ negative reputation will negatively affect your reputation. A negative reputation can impact your delivery rate. If you use a shared IP for sending email:
Use Postmaster Tools to monitor outgoing emailUse Postmaster Tools to get information about the email you send to Gmail users, for example:
Troubleshoot email delivery issuesIf you use an email service providerIf you’re having delivery issues with email sent by a service provider, verify that they use the recommended practices in this article. Use MX Toolbox to review domain settingsUse the Google Admin Toolbox to check and fix settings for your domain. Fix the source of rejected emailIf your messages are rejected, you might get an error message. Learn more about the error so you can fix the problem. Common error messages are:
Learn more about email and SMTP error messages:
Fix IPv6 authorization errorsAn IPv6 authorization error could mean that the PTR record for the sending server isn’t using IPv6. If you use an email service provider, confirm they’re using an IPv6 PTR record. Here's an example of an IPv6 authorization error: Use the troubleshooting toolIf you’re still having mail delivery problems after following the guidelines in this article, try Troubleshooting for senders with email delivery issues. Why do my messages keep going to spam?Your content triggered spam filters
If you're landing in spam and can't find the cause in your sender reputation, authentication, or other factors listed above, take a look at your content: Remove any spammy words or phrases in your email copy, subject line, or preview text. Keep your copy concise and meaningful.
How do I stop emails from going to spam in Gmail?12 tips to avoid emails going to spam in Gmail. Create warm connections before reaching out.. Use short and relevant subject lines.. Remove spam triggering keywords.. Optimize content for response rates.. Ask users to create a filter.. Avoid spam reports.. Use the right email client.. Follow the laws.. How do I stop emails going to spam in Outlook?If you want to stop all junk filtering by Outlook, do the following:. Click on the Junk tool button in the toolbar near the top left of the Outlook window.. Click to select Junk E-Mail Options. ... . Click the topmost option, labelled No Automatic Filtering. ... . Click OK.. |