Google recently shared updated guidance about their policies around email marketing. As campaigns enter the final stretch, there are some important steps every campaigner should follow.
- Authenticate your outgoing mail
- Respect user choice
- Use Postmaster Tools
- Monitor spam rates
- Ramp up slowly
- Maintain consistent sending volumes
- Avoid misleading display names and subject lines
- Limit sharing of IP Addresses and Domains
- Don’t spoof
Email Authentication
For more details on how to authenticate your campaign’s emails with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, check out our guide here. Valimail is a free tool that campaigns can use through the Defending Digital Campaigns program to manage email authentication.
Respecting users
This starts with only sending email to supporters who have given explicit permission to receive emails from your campaign. Email lists you receive from third parties like the county party or previous candidates cannot be considered as opted in and will hurt your email program.
Also make it easy to unsubscribe from your emails as an unengaged subscriber can hurt your performance or even mark messages as spam.
Postmaster Tools
Postmaster Tools is a free service provided by Google to monitor key factors related to your campaign’s emails sent to Gmail users, like spam rates and message authentication.
Monitor Spam Rates
Gmail expects email marketers to keep their spam rates below 0.1%. This is why it’s important to make it easy for a supporter to unsubscribe.
Increase Sending Volume Slowly
Campaigns often run afoul of this guideline, especially if they’re sending to a list that hasn’t been used since the previous election. In order to get your emails to the inbox, start by sending to smaller segments of your list spread out over a few days.
Send Consistently
Once you’ve gotten your email list ramped up, send consistently to avoid spikes in volume that may indicate spam-like behavior. One way to do this is with an “active screen” where you send to the active segment of your email list first before sending to the rest.
Avoid Misleading Sender Names and Subject Lines
This is one of the newer pieces of guidance from Gmail and speaks specifically to tactics commonly seen in political emails. Emojis that imitate things like the paperclip attachment or other Gmail functionality will result in fewer delivered emails.
Gmail also says to avoid “Re:” or “Fwd” in subject lines for marketing emails.
Limiting Shared IPs and Domains
Most campaigns will use a service like Mailchimp to send marketing emails and companies like these take steps to manage the shared IP addresses, however, some digital agencies will use one IP address for all of their clients, meaning your campaign is subject to the status of their other clients’ reputations.
Additionally, many email list rental providers send emails on behalf of multiple campaigns from the same domain.
Spoofing
Spoofing means impersonating other domains or senders and is a common practice in campaign emails where the sender name might not reflect the actual sender. If your campaign does this, keep an eye on how it affects your deliverability.
Conclusion
Most of this new guidance from Google is familiar to experienced digital campaigners but there are a few surprises that may require adapting how you run your email program.
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