Fascinating delivery insights from Google
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on November 01, 2007
Read through this blog post by David Berlind, based around his discussions with a GMail associate product manager.David gives an excellent summary of how legitimate emails can suffer from people using "this is spam" buttons when what they really want to do is unsubscribe.
More importantly, he highlights two important developments:
1. That the new IMAP functionality means that when people use desktop email clients to manage the email in their Gmail account, moving an email into the junk folder is now counted as equivalent to reporting it as spam.
Typically, shifting email around like this in your desktop email software does not report anything back to the actual email delivery system. But using IMAP, it now does.
Implication: effectively this means more spam reports are likely from Gmail users.
If IMAP functionality spreads, then the "this is spam" button becomes much more powerful in determining whether ISPs or webmail services stick you on a blocklist.
Previously, it was largely "this is spam" clicks via webmail interfaces that mattered. In the future, it could be "this is spam" clicks through desktop and handheld interfaces, too.
2. David also indicates that Gmail recognizes the problem with spam reports being a mix of real spam and legitimate email that people simply want to unsubscribe from.
And they're exploring ways of addressing that issue. Similar to how Hotmail introduced a standard unsubscribe button.
In the future, then, legitimate email marketers might get more protection from unfair spam complaints through a combination of authentication technologies, sender reputation and certification technologies, and a standard unsubscribe email header.
These tell inbox guardians who you are and whether you have shown yourself to be a good sender of emails in the past. And allow them to unsubscribe recipients automatically as soon as the latter express a wish not to receive your emails anymore.
There's more insight on Gmail's thinking in a 6-page 2006 Google paper Email Karma sends us to, discussing how Gmail uses reputation to classify sending domains as spammy or not.
The paper is a fascinating look behind the scenes at a major email address provider. Another must read for those very involved with deliverability.
More on deliverability | Tags: email marketing, email deliverability, gmail, google, google mail
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2 Comments:
Mark,
I applaud Google for their anti-spam efforts, but I wish they would catch up with other major ISP's and follow ARF standards for reporting spam complaints back to marketers. Without sharing this data, receivers like Google simply block or filter senders without the sender ever understanding why or being given a fighting chance to do something about it.
By 
stefan, on
02 November, 2007
Now that you mention it, Google/Gmail haven't been so proactive in public collaboration with marketers when compared to say AOL or Microsoft. Though things may go on behind the scenes(?)
Seems a little odd when you consider how close they work with webmasters with regard to their search results, with the webmaster tools interface and public faces like Matt Cutts etc.
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
02 November, 2007
