Playbook objective
This playbook’s objective is to improve sending reputation at Gmail and Microsoft.
- If you are a new Everest customer with no prior relationship with Validity, complete onboarding to ensure you are familiar with navigating and using Everest.
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Ensure you have completed the following set up guides:
- Everest Basic Set Up Guide.
- Everest Advanced Setup Guide 2: Sending Reputation (FBL Complaints, Microsoft SNDS, Google Postmaster)
- Sign up for the Gmail Feedback Loop.
- Sign up for Microsoft's Junk Mail Reporting Program (JMRP - Step 5: Reputation Management)
Important! Be sure you know the subscription allotments based on your service tier and plan according to your sending frequency and the size of your email database. You can find your subscription information by navigating to My Everest > Account Settings > Subscription.
- Common sending reputation challenges
- How monitoring sending reputation fits into your process
- Using the API to streamline workflows
- Fixing your sending reputation at Gmail and Microsoft
- How to use Everest to monitor sending reputation at Gmail and Microsoft
- What to do next
Common challenges associated with poor sending reputation are:
- We have poor deliverability at Gmail and Microsoft.
- We want to monitor and have team visibility with Google Postmaster and Microsoft SNDS data.
Monitoring your sending reputation helps you identify problems associated with:
- Flat or decreasing inbox placement rates
- Flat or decreasing open and click rates
A traditional email marketing process consists of three phases: Pre-Send, In-Flight, and Monitoring. Sending reputation metrics are symptoms of your good or poor sending practices, so frequent monitoring is vital to identifying and fixing potential problems.
Pre-send
- Inform your email campaign strategy with Everest’s Competitive Intelligence
- Plan campaign
- Select target subscriber list
- Design campaign
- Validate target subscriber list using Everest’s List Validation
- Test campaign design using Everest’s Design & Content
In-Flight
- Send campaign to subscribers and the Everest seed list
- View your campaign’s inbox placement, spam, and missing results using Everest’s Inbox Placement
Monitoring
- Monitor engagement metrics using Everest’s Engagement, your ESP, or internal sending platform.
- Monitor sending reputation metrics using Everest’s Monitoring feature to understand the impact to your deliverability.
- Monitor DMARC compliance to identify unauthorized use of your domain and brand using Everest’s Infrastructure feature.
If you have not started to use the Everest API, it is recommended to automate the receipt of sending reputation data to save time and for the flexibility to use and view the data according to your business needs. Developer resources required.
Authenticating your email is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity. DMARC leverages the SPF and DKIM authentication standards and is used as an additional tool for mailbox providers, including Gmail and Microsoft, to identify you as a legitimate sender. Having your DMARC enforcement policy set to p=none and monitoring reports is important so you can identify non-compliant domains and potential domain abuse. But, it doesn't protect your brand from domain abuse. Every sender should aspire to achieve and work towards a fully enforced DMARC policy of p=reject.
Moving your DMARC enforcement policy to p=reject not only helps build trust with mailbox providers, it also helps to prevent harm to your sending reputation and brand by spammers spoofing your domain.
Moving to a p=reject policy needs to be done properly or it could result in blocking your legitimate email. For assistance on how to work toward a fully enforced DMARC policy, please read:
- Everest Authentication Compliance Playbook: Beginner
- Everest Authentication Compliance Playbook: Intermediate
- Everest Authentication Compliance Playbook: Advanced
A fully enforced DMARC policy also allows you to implement Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI). Businesses using BIMI to display their logo in email at participating mailbox providers see engagement increases because recipients have more trust in the email's legitimacy. Increased engagement improves your sending reputation at all mailbox providers, including Gmail and Microsoft.
Take concrete steps to fix identified sending reputation problems as outlined in the intermediate sending reputation playbook. These fixes will also help you improve your sending reputation at Gmail and Microsoft.
Be sure to comply with all best practice recommendations. Compliance with their recommendations increases the likelihood of being delivered to the inbox and increases your chances of getting help from their postmasters for support requests.
Prior to starting the sending reputation improvement plan outlined below:
- Note your Gmail and Microsoft baseline inbox placement rates using Everest's Inbox Placement. You will want to compare future results to your baseline value to know if your efforts to improve sending reputation are working.
- Integrate Gmail Postmaster and Microsoft SNDS data into Everest.
- Everest Advanced Setup Guide 2: Sending Reputation (FBL Complaints, Microsoft SNDS, Google Postmaster)
- Note your reputation indicators from each tool and compare future performance to know if your efforts to improve sending reputation are working.
Important! This method is intended for senders with poor sending reputation and inbox placement at Gmail and Microsoft. This aggressive approach is not suitable for senders with good sending reputation and inbox placement who are seeking an incremental performance increase. As with any change recommendation, consider the impact to your business.
- Senders with good sending reputation and inbox placement seeking incremental gains at Gmail and Microsoft should focus on fixing general sending reputation issues as outlined in the intermediate playbook. You should also use our other Everest playbooks to improve your data quality and subscriber engagement.
Sending reputation rescue and recover
The severity of your sending reputation issues and your risk tolerance will help determine how aggressive you need to be during this phase of your recovery. The strategy of this plan involves strictly sending to engaged subscribers, and then slowly introducing less engaged subscribers until you are sending to most of your addressable Gmail or Microsoft database.
- For the next 15-30 days, send only to subscribers that opened your email within the last 15 days.
- You might also consider using subscribers that clicked in addition to opens for situations where an open can't be accurately determined (e.g. Apple privacy changes).
- After 15-30 days, expand your list to include subscribers that opened your email in the last 30 days.
- After 15-30 days, expand your list to include subscribers that opened your email in the last 60 days.
- After 15-30 days, expand your list to include subscribers that opened your email in the last 90 days.
Monitor your results closely and only move to the next level after seeing improvement. When you start to see improvement, send a few more campaigns at the current level before going to the next level. This allows the spam filters to stabilize with your "new normal" sending patterns and metrics.
At this point you can start adding subscribers that have not engaged in your email for over 90 days or more. Follow a similar measured and methodical approach for adding more subscribers to allow the spam filters time to adjust to your volume increase and metrics. For subscribers less engaged with your email, first target those who may show engagement with your brand using other methods such as an account login, app usage, recent purchase, or webinar attendance.
Once you introduce unengaged subscribers, you may notice a point where performance metrics plateau or decrease indicating a viability threshold. It is at this point where continuing to send to additional unengaged subscribers may lead to diminished returns and start long-term harm to your (now recovered) sending reputation.
Tips
- Be sure you are sending to the Everest seed list and monitoring deliverability closely.
- The amount of time to see changes to your sending reputation and deliverability will vary depending on the severity of your reputation issues and volume. It may take less than 15 days or longer than 30 days to see results for some senders.
- When you introduce less engaged subscribers, you may see a temporary dip in performance as the filters adjust to the new volume and engagement levels. Monitor for a few days and see if your metrics return to more normal levels.
Sending reputation maintenance
After your sending reputation recovers and you are sending to a large percentage of your full subscriber list, you need to maintain your gains.
The maintenance strategy involves:
- A commitment to following their best practice recommendations.
- Frontloading subscribers who are highly engaged with your email at the start of a campaign and sending to less engaged subscribers at the end of your campaign. This approach increases the likelihood (but does not guarantee) that your email is delivered to the inboxes for subscribers who are less engaged.
For each future campaign to Gmail or Microsoft subscribers:
- Run a report for your entire Gmail or Microsoft list file by open rate or click rate.
- Reorder the file from most engaged (highest open/click rate) to least engaged (lowest open/click rate).
- Break the list up into 4 separate segments. All segments must be ranked from most to least engaged in their respective buckets.
- When you send your next campaign, deploy each segment 30 minutes apart.
- Include the full Everest seed list with each segment if allotments allow.
- Do not split the seed list across each segment.
- Monitor the results.
Use Everest to identify important trends, outliers, and patterns to help point you to specific causes of poor sending reputation at Gmail and Microsoft. Everest integration is required for Google Postmaster and Microsoft SNDS data to appear.
Google postmaster tools
1. Login to Everest
2. Navigate to Monitoring>Reputation
3. Locate the Google Postmaster Tools widget
4. Identify any domains with reputation issues and click on the details arrow
5. Locate the IP Reputation section and click on the reputation tabs to identify the good or problematic IP addresses.
6. Review the Authentication & Encryption section to ensure all messages are authenticating as expected.
7. Review the User-Reported Spam Rate section to identify campaigns causing high user complaints.
8. Review the Feedback Loop Identifiers section to identify problematic campaigns.
9. Repeat steps 4-8 for each problematic domain
Tip: Review domains with a good reputation to identify negative trends. Proactive troubleshooting for negative trends not necessarily resulting in poor deliverability can help avoid future deliverability problems.
SNDS
1. Login to Everest
2. Navigate to Monitoring>Reputation
3. Locate the Microsoft SNDS widget and click View Report
4. Filter by Red reputation as this requires your immediate attention
- The date range defaults to 30 days, but you can change if desired.
5. Review the Microsoft SNDS Trend graph to help pinpoint specific dates that correlate with campaigns
6. Review the IP Performance and IP Issues widgets for additional troubleshooting insights.
7. Repeat steps 4-6 for the Yellow reputation.
Tip: Also filter and review the Green reputation category to identify negative trends. Proactive troubleshooting for negative trends not necessarily resulting in poor deliverability can help avoid future deliverability problems.
1. Commit yourself to monitoring and fixing sending reputation issues quickly to avoid long-term harm to your reputation and deliverability.
2. Continue reading our other Everest playbooks to help take your email marketing program to the next level.
