Gmail

Google (Apps and GSuite) Workspace best practices and troubleshooting support

The following is a summary of best practices for sending email to Google Workspace (formerly Google Apps and GSuite) users. The base spam, malware, and phishing protections of Google Apps are provided by Gmail. However, Google Workspace customers can configure custom spam filters and mail routing rules depending on their internal policies and desired business outcomes.

Configuration flexibility can lead to varied outcomes across Google Workspace customers for B2B and B2C marketing campaigns.

Infrastructure

Regions

Worldwide

Website

Google Workspace

Domains

Google Workspace customers use their own domain

Resources

Methodology

Google Workspace uses Gmail to protect users from spam, viruses, phishing, and malware. Gmail analyzes a large range of sender data points and uses AI-driven filters that learn how to identify spam and phishing messages through user actions and feedback.

  • Base spam filtering
    • IP, domain, and subdomain reputation
    • Virus and malware protection
  • Advanced spam filtering
    • AI-driven machine learning based on user actions and feedback.
    • Customer-defined content compliance and filtering based on sets of words, phrases, text patterns, and numerical patterns.
    • Customer-defined mail routing for advanced spam, virus, phishing, and malware protection.
    • Customer and user-defined allowlists and blocklists.

Google Workspace best practices

  • Security
    • Ensure all servers are protected from unauthorized access and use.
    • Ensure all servers are free from viruses and malware.
    • Make sure all email sent from your servers is authorized.
  • Infrastructure
    • Follow all Internet and SMTP standards.
    • Ensure your HELO/EHLO is configured with a valid fully qualified domain name (FQDN).
    • Ensure your IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) has a valid, non-generic rDNS (PTR) record.
    • Do not send email through an open relay or open proxy server.
    • Do not send email from a dynamic IP address.
    • Use Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 and higher - Some Google Workspace customers may reject messages (see error codes) that don't use TLS.
      • If the customer does not require TLS, your email will go through their spam filtering process as normal.
  • Sending best practices
    • Consent
      • Use opt-in consent methods.
      • Do not purchase lists or engage in list harvesting techniques from websites and social networks.
    • List hygiene
      • Ensure you have good list hygiene practices and frequently suppress inactive subscribers.
    • Reputation
      • Follow all email marketing sending best practices to ensure a high IP and Domain reputation.
        • Senders with a poor sending reputation will have difficulty reaching the inbox.
      • Sign up with Google's Postmaster Tools to help you monitor your domain reputations. Their Postmaster Tools may have limited data for some B2B senders.
      • High volume senders that send to gmail.com addresses should sign up for Gmail's Feedback Loop to help identify sources of complaints.
        • Gmail Feedback Loop
        • The feedback loop only works when sending to gmail.com addresses.
        • Gmail does not send complaints to a sender like typical complaint feedback loops. Data can be viewed using their Postmaster Tools.
        • Some B2B senders will not benefit from signing up due to lower sending volumes or not sending to gmail.com addresses. Determine if it is worthwhile by looking up the percentage of gmail.com subscribers in your subscriber list.
    • Sending guidelines
      • Do not engage in domain spoofing or your email will be perceived as phishing.
      • Respect the receiving server resources and reduce volume and frequency should throttling occur.
      • Encourage recipients to add your sending address to their contacts list. Email addresses in a contacts list are less likely to be marked as spam.
      • Send messages no larger than 50 MB.
        • Some Google Workspace customers may accept smaller messages.
      • Use the same domain for sending email and hosting your website.
      • If you send from multiple IPs, use a different IP for each type of message.
      • Don't mix content types in your messages such as marketing promotions on an invoice.
    • Unsubscribe
      • Include a prominent unsubscribe link in all emails and immediately honor all unsubscribe requests. 
      • Use List-unsubscribe (mailto or URL). If you use both, the first method stated in the list-unsubscribe header will be used.
  • Authentication
    • Authenticate all email using Sender Policy framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC).
      • Work towards a quarantine or reject DMARC policy to help protect your brand from unauthorized domain use.
      • Unauthenticated emails are likely to be perceived as spam and quarantined or blocked.
      • If you use a hard fail SPF mechanism (-all), be sure your SPF record is up to date or your mail may be blocked.
  • Engagement
    • Send to people that want to receive your email. Highly engaged subscribers improves your sending reputation and can lead to higher inbox placement.
  • Content
    • Branding
      • Include your brand name in the friendly from address and within the email content to ensure your email is easily recognized by the recipient.
      • B2B senders should also include a brand name until a relationship with the recipient has been established.
        • Unexpected, cold emails from an individual salesperson are likely to be marked as spam.
      • A top reason for high complaints is when the recipient doesn't recognize the sender.
    • Do not use scripting languages in email design such as ActiveX, JavaScript, or VBScript.
    • Use AMP for email if you want to send dynamic email to your Google Workspace and Gmail subscribers. A Google Workspace customer can turn dynamic email off, so be sure to have traditional HTML and plain text content options available.
    • Always include valid, reputable URLs in your email content. Do not link to websites involved in phishing or malware. 
    • Use the standard URL format. Avoid using IP addresses in the URL.
    • Ensure all attachments are free from viruses and malware.
    • Avoid sending attachments with the following file extensions as they will be blocked.
      • .ade, .adp, .apk, .appx, .appxbundle, .bat, .cab, .chm, .cmd, .com, .cpl, .diagcab, .diagcfg, .diagpack, .dll, .dmg, .ex, .ex_, .exe, .hta, .img, .ins, .iso, .isp, .jar, .jnlp, .js, .jse, .lib, .lnk, .mde, .msc, .msi, .msix, .msixbundle, .msp, .mst, .nsh, .pif, .ps1, .scr, .sct, .shb, .sys, .vb, .vbe, .vbs, .vhd, .vxd, .wsc, .wsf, .wsh, and .xll
  • Warm up new IP addresses or domains
    • Warming up IPs and domains is typically associated more with B2C senders, but is recommended for all senders as a best practice.

Google Workspace troubleshooting support

If you have an established relationship with a Google Workspace customer and encountering delivery problems, contact them directly and ask to be added to their allowlist or approved senders list. Individual recipients can also add you to their personal contact list to help with inbox delivery.

  • Best practices
    • Ensure you are following all recommended Gmail best practices.
  • Review your SMTP error codes
    • Refer to Gmail Error Codes for additional information about why your email is being deferred or blocked.
      • Immediately suppress email addresses that return an SMTP error code indicating the address is an unknown user or a disabled account.
  • Check your email headers
    • Copy and paste your Google Workspace (Apps) message headers from Everest into the header analyzer. You can also use Everest to identify delivery delays with Minutes to Receive (MTR) as displayed in your inbox test.
  • Check your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configuration and results
    • Check the Google Workspace (Apps) Authentication-results message header in Everest to ensure all authentication results are passing (=pass).
    • Ensure all IPs and domains are up to date and include any third-party senders that send on your behalf.
      • New IPs, domains, mail streams, ESPs, and mail servers are common reasons why SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are not updated.
    • If authentication is failing and if your IPs and domains are up to date, you may have a setup configuration error.
  • Check blocklistings
    • Google does not publicly disclose which blocklists they use in filtering decisions, but active blocklistings may indicate a problem you need to fix. 
      • MX Toolbox Blocklist Check
      • Everest customers can check for blocklistings by navigating to: Monitoring>Reputation and click on View Report on the Blocklisted tile.
      • Investigate and fix the cause of any blocklistings.
  • Check your content
    • Look for and change content that could be construed as an attempt to capture sensitive personal information from the recipient.
      • This applies to text within attached images such as: .gif, .jpg, .png, and .tiff.
    • Check the reputations of all URLs within your content.
  • Contact Google with delivery problems.
    • Ensure you are following all of Gmail's recommended best practices and have made fixes or improvements to your email program. Gmail spam filtering is data driven, so improved metrics over time will help more of your mail reach the inbox.
    • There is no guarantee that Google will respond to your submission or make any adjustments to their filtering algorithms.

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