How to Reach Gmail’s Inbox Consistently

What if all your emails are heading straight to spam?

And Gmail lands in Spam?

Gmail judges you based on your recipients’ reactions

Gmail surpassed long-time heavyweight champion Apple Mail earlier this year. That makes it now the most popular inbox provider with nearly a 30% market share. Because of this, it pays to understand how Gmail determines your relevance. To do this, Gmail relies on user feedback.

It tracks all the actions you make after receiving an email: flagging as spam, replying, deleting, clicking, moving it to the Junk folder. These explicit actions have a direct relation to how Gmail classifies the email for the given user.

In this way, Gmail favors emails that interest you but penalizes emails you flag, delete, or leave unopened. Essentially, as long as you keep opening and replying to emails from Mom, Gmail will consider her information relevant, deliver her emails to your inbox, and raise her sender reputation.

But emails from unfamiliar senders are more likely flagged or deleted, lowering their sender reputations and landing their subsequent emails in the spam folder. (This is true even for new, unrelated Gmail account holders.)

But you do at least get a say!

Are you asking your readers to reply? Just making that single request can make a big difference. Of course, encourage replies with other questions, surprising content, and relevant information as well, but don’t forget to ask directly for replies.

User behavior isn’t the only source of clues Gmail uses to establish an email’s relevance.

It also looks at components of each email, like images and keywords. Here are some tips to make the most of these elements and earn Gmail’s badge of approval:

• ✅ Reduce the size of the images. Aim to be under 100 kb.
• ✅ Reduce the number of links to 3 or less per email.
• ✅ Experiment with the tone of your message. Marketing emails can feel redundant after a while. Test what kind of tone resonates with your contacts the best. Maybe your messages can be more playful instead of professional.

Segmentation is key

However, keep in mind that these tips are useless if you only send your emails to an unengaged segment that won’t open your email. Sending your emails to engaged people will increase your sender reputation over time and ensure your email is delivered to the inbox consistently.

That doesn’t mean that you’ll have to ignore your unengaged, either. By including them in small doses, you can slowly and carefully nurture the ones who are genuinely interested in your content without sinking your sender reputation.

Actionable steps to take when facing spam issues:

1. Deactivate all the current flows except for your most highly engaging: Welcome and Cart Abandonment.
2. Remake the templates as plain text as possible and leave only 2 emails per flow. Leaving more emails will get lower open rates, harming deliverability.
3. Make a pop-up and give people an incentive to subscribe. Use a strong lead magnet like, for example, a discount. Don’t display the discount code in the thank-you pop-up; simply explain that you have emailed the discount.
4. Add a success image after they subscribe via the pop-up. It should say, “If you don’t find your discount code please check your Promo and Spam folders.”
5. Create a segment of highly engaged people that opened or clicked at least 1 email recently. Aim for an open rate of more than 20%.
6. Start sending them regular campaigns with compelling promos, unique offers, and content that makes them feel special.

What if your list is brand new?

When doing email marketing in a brand new account, the best thing is to start sending campaigns only to engaged people that will open your emails. This is called “warming the list.”

It’s crucial that you get good open rates. Since you are sending emails from a fresh account, you don’t have a sender reputation yet. But you can rapidly get a good reputation by sending to engaged people during this Warm Up period when inbox providers like Gmail are evaluating you.

Ettore Bellò and Thomas McClintock, Hustler Marketing