It’s been an exciting year for email marketing, with Gmail and Yahoo making new changes to help curb spam and enhance the subscriber experience. You may have heard of their new bulk sender requirements like authentication and list-unsubscribe header. But something you may not have noticed is Gmail’s upgraded Postmaster Tools dashboard. Google Postmaster Tools (GPT) gives senders an easy way to check if they’re compliant with the new standards.
GPT features
If you’re unfamiliar with GPT, you’re missing out on a wealth of data. A large portion of your audience is likely a Gmail user, and GPT is the best place to get information directly from Gmail about how you’re performing. Some features of GPT include:
- Spam rate: This shows you the volume of user-reported spam (the number of emails marked as spam versus the total number that made it to the inbox).
- Domain and IP reputation: We always try to highlight the importance of maintaining a good reputation with both your domain and your IP. This feature helps by showing whether the Gmail spam filter might mark emails from the domain or IP as spam.
- Authentication: This shows how much of your traffic has passed SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
- Encryption: Show Transport Layer Security (TLS) encrypted traffic. This is important for privacy and data security.
- Delivery errors: This is a useful tool for keeping track of blocks and temporary failures.
- Feedback loop identifiers: This shows the number of unique feedback loop identifiers flagged by Gmail for senders who have implemented the Gmail FBL.
Within Everest, you can see all your domains in a quick view (pictured below) and then click into one to see more details. It’s the same data you will see in your Postmaster Tools dashboard.
This information has been available through GPT for several years and has provided valuable insight into your email program’s Gmail performance.
Leveraging GPT for compliance
As mentioned earlier, Gmail (and Yahoo!) are cracking down on senders with new regulations to help protect subscribers. To help support senders, Gmail has released shiny new features in the GPT dashboard.
One new feature is the Compliance Status. This dashboard (shown below) looks at their new requirements and tells the sender if they’re compliant. If they aren’t compliant, there’s a warning symbol and information about what still needs to be set up.
In this next screenshot, we see how lovely this dashboard can look when everything is correctly configured and compliant.
Many senders worry about whether or not they’re compliant or what else they need to set up, but this new version of Postmaster Tools is here to help.
Other mailbox providers are also working to support senders. Yahoo currently has a limited beta version of their updated Sender Hub available. Validity’s Guy Hanson recently sat down with Microsoft in a State of Email webinar to discuss in-depth how they determine what a good email sender looks like, how their spam filtering works, and more.
Building a better email experience
Mailbox providers aren’t the bad guys. They genuinely want to help senders follow best practices, but they have a crucial job of protecting their customers first and foremost. It is great to see them releasing stricter regulations but also tools and information to help guide senders. The more they protect their customers from spammers, phishers, and spoofing attacks, the more room there is in the inbox for good senders like you.
The updates to GPT are just one key change to the deliverability landscape in 2024. For more insights on what’s new in email deliverability and how to reach more inboxes, watch our on-demand webinar, “How to Reach More Inboxes and Avoid the Spam Folder in 2024.”