Sending practices to avoid.
- Don't mix different types of content in the same message. For example, don't include promotions in sales receipt messages.
- Don't impersonate other domains or senders without permission. This practice is called spoofing, and Gmail might mark these messages as spam.
- Don't mark internal messages as spam. This can negatively affect your domain's reputation, and future messages might be marked as spam.
- Don't purchase email addresses from other companies.
- Don't send messages to people who didn't sign up to get messages from you. These recipients might mark your messages as spam, and future messages to these recipients will be marked as spam.
- Avoid opt-in forms that are checked by default and that automatically subscribe users. Some countries and regions restrict automatic opt-in. Before you opt-in users automatically, check the regulations in your region.
Some legitimate messages may be marked as spam. Recipients can mark valid messages as not spam, so future messages from the sender should be delivered to their inbox.
Increase sending volume slowly
When increasing sending volume, keep in mind:
- Increasing the sending volume too quickly can result in delivery problems. As you gradually increase your sending mail volume, use Postmaster Tools to monitor email delivery.
- For Google Workspace work and school accounts, sending limits apply even when recipients are in different Google Workspace domains. For example, you might send email to users with email addresses that have the domains your-company.net and solarmora.com. Although the domains are different, if both domains have google.com as their MX record, messages sent to these domains count toward your limit.
- If you use Google Workspace or Gmail for sending: When you reach the sending limit, the sending rate is limited for the sending IP address.
If you send large amounts of email, we recommend you:
- Send email at a consistent rate. Avoid sending email in bursts.
- Start with a low sending volume to engaged users, and slowly increase the volume over time.
- As you increase the sending volume, regularly monitor server responses, spam rate, and the sending domain's reputation. Regular monitoring will allow you to quickly adapt if your sending is rate limited, if the spam rate is increased, or when the sending domain's reputation drops.
- Avoid introducing sudden volume spikes if you do not have a history of sending large volumes. For example, immediately doubling previously sent volumes suddenly could result in rate limiting or reputation drops.
- If you change the format of your bulk emails, gradually increase the sending volume of messages with the new format.
- After making any significant changes to your sending infrastructure or email header structure, increase the modified segment of traffic separately.
- If messages start bouncing or start being deferred, reduce the sending volume until the SMTP error rate decreases. Then, increase slowly again. If bounces and deferrals continue at a low volume, review individual messages to identify problems. For example, you can try sending a blank test message and see if it experiences issues.
- Stay within the IP limits for sending:
- Be aware of email sending limits when sending from domains that have a Google.com MX host.
- Limit sending email from a single IP address based on the MX record domain, not the domain in the recipient email address.
- Monitor responses so you can change sending rates as needed to stay within these limits.
These factors affect how quickly you can increase sending volume:
- Amount of email sent: The more email that you send, the more slowly you should increase sending volume.
- Frequency of sending email: You can increase the sending volume more quickly when you send daily instead of weekly.
- Recipient feedback about your messages: Make sure you send only to people who subscribe to your emails, and give recipients an option to unsubscribe.
In the event of a recent spike in email activity, we recommend following the requirements and guidelines on this page to resolve deliverability issues automatically during following sends.