Monitor your deliverability performance with Gmail users
Gmail is the largest email inbox provider in the world with over 1.8 billion active users. Due to their substantial presence, the way they handle emails from your brand is incredibly impactful on your bottom line. If Gmail users are frequently marking your emails as spam, your overall sender reputation with Gmail will suffer. Almost ⅓ of all email opens occur in Gmail, so if Gmail starts routing all of your messages directly to spam, this will have a huge impact on your ability to generate revenue via email.
Unfortunately, Gmail does not provide spam complaint feedback directly to email service providers (ESPs) like Klaviyo. This means that the spam complaint rate you see in your Klaviyo account excludes Gmail users, but the prevalence of Gmail means that you can't afford to remain ignorant about your Gmail spam complaint rate. To view spam complaints from Gmail users, you will need to use Google Postmaster Tools.
Set up Google Postmaster Tools
Before you begin, make sure you:
- have successfully configured a branded sending domain in your Klaviyo account.
- have access to edit your domain’s DNS (Domain Name System) records.
If you meet both prerequisites, it only takes a few minutes to set up Google Postmaster Tools. Follow the steps below:
Navigate to Google Postmaster Tools
Head to Google Postmaster Tools to begin the setup process. Click Get Started. Sign into Google with your Google account credentials.
Add your root domain
Click the Addbutton in the bottom right corner of the screen to add your domain. Enter your domain name. This domain should be the root domain that you use to send emails.
Verify your root domain
Google will generate a verification TXT record. You will need to add this TXT record to your DNS, with the hostname being the root domain, and verify the record in order to successfully complete the setup. In order to update your DNS records, you will need access to your DNS host.
Add your Klaviyo branded sending domain
Click the Addbutton in the bottom right corner of the screen to add your Klaviyo branded sending domain (example: send.brand.com). This domain will not need to be verified since the root domain already has been.
Add users to your domains
You may want several members of your team to have access to the reports in Google Postmaster. Add users to your domain by clicking the 3 dots to the right of the domain, and click Manage users. Then, click Add. Enter the Google account email address of the person you’d like to add.
Note that you can only add users to your domain if they have a Google account.
Need more help? Refer to Google’s Get started with Postmaster Tools guide. For troubleshooting help, refer to Google’s Postmaster Tools FAQ.
Observe performance of key deliverability factors
Once your root domain and sending domain have both been added to Google Postmaster Tools, you can toggle between the two domains to see performance trends across several key dimensions. To view performance of emails sent from Klaviyo, you should look at reports for your branded sending domain, not for your root domain. Your root domain reports will include performance for all emails sent through your domain across the internet, beyond Klaviyo.
Explore each factor, the impact it has on your ability to land in the inbox, and what actions you can take from each report.
Spam rate
Spam rate is the percentage of emails marked as spam by users.
This calculation does not include emails that are delivered directly to the spam folder. For this reason, it is possible that many of your messages are going directly to spam even though you have a low spam rate percentage.
Google calculates spam rate daily. You want to aim to keep your daily spam rate below 0.1%, and avoid ever reaching above 0.3% on any given day.
To lower your spam rate, narrow your audience to a smaller, more highly-engaged group of recipients. Be sure to verify that you are only sending to recipients who have explicitly opted in.
Domain reputation
Your domain reputation reflects how likely your messages are to be filtered into the spam folder. A higher reputation means a lower risk of landing in spam.
While domain reputation is just 1 signal for spam filtering, it is a good indicator of your overall deliverability health.
If your domain reputation is Poor or Bad, then you should re-evaluate your current sending strategy. Try sending to more refined audiences, or pull back your sending cadence if you are sending every day.
Feedback loop
Feedback Loop (FBL) is a tool that allows high-volume senders to identify specific campaigns that received a high volume of spam complaints from Gmail users.
All emails sent from Klaviyo will automatically include a header called Feedback-ID. The identifiers included in this header is what Google uses to track and aggregate complaint trends.
If you observe a spike in spam complaints due to a specific campaign, take a look at that campaign to see if you did not follow best practices.
Authentication
This dashboard will show you the percentage of your emails that passed SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication checks.
It’s good to keep an eye on this report to see if there are any potential issues with your SPF, DKIM or DMARC configuration.
This report may also be easier to interpret than the DMARC reports that are emailed to you automatically when failures occur. This report can more easily help you spot if someone was attempting to send unauthorized messages from your domain.
Make Postmaster Tools part of your regular reporting routine
If your messages are landing in spam, that means you can’t successfully reach your recipients. Which means all of the time and effort that your team pours into crafting email marketing campaigns or designing targeted flows goes to waste.
Your ability to get your messages into the inbox is at the core of your entire email marketing strategy. Your business will realize a major long-term benefit by making Google Postmaster Tools part of your regular email reporting routine if it isn’t already. Check this tool weekly to view your Spam Rate and Domain Reputation. Observe trends around what kinds of campaigns produce higher spam complaints, or if you may be over-messaging your audience, causing unnecessary spam complaints.