Marketing Cloud or Account Engagement email sends delivered to Gmail Spam folder

Direct your emails to the Gmail Inbox 

Typically, spam delivery issues at Gmail resolve themselves over time as complaints slow down or subscriber behavior improves.

One way to circumvent spam filtering is to use the 'Address Book' strategy and contact your subscribers to request that they add your 'From Address' you to their address books (ensures that your messages will be delivered to their Inbox). Many Marketing Cloud or Account Engagement clients will occasionally make this request using a call-to-action in their email header (for example, 'Please add us to your Safe Senders List, learn how here')

Encourage subscribers to interact and respond to your email messages. Clicking on links in a message and clicking on the "not spam" button both go a long way to improving your ability to deliver mail to the Gmail inbox successfully.
 

Continued Gmail spam delivery problems

Unfortunately, due to Gmail's policies Marketing Cloud and Account Engagement Support cannot contact them for assistance as they do not work with outside commercial senders. You as the sender can Submit the Google Bulk Sender Form  to ask them to reconsider spam folder delivery.

When you experience Gmail deliverability issues (or any ISP), a great strategy is to focus on the most engaged portions of your list (those who have opened or clicked in the last 90 days) and stop sending to the non-engaged portions until delivery improves. Once your emails are regularly sent to your recipients' inboxes you can start slowly reintroducing your less-engaged subscribers.

Gmail has also noted that their system is very user-action oriented and that each inbox will react differently based on that user's past actions.

For more details about Gmail sending strategy, see the attachments on this article or review the ReturnPath Blog post titled 'Are you having problems delivering to Gmail? You're not alone.'
 

Sign up for Google Postmaster Tools

Unfortunately not all reporting is available for Gmail recipients since they do not offer any sort of feedback loop. What they do offer is a free service called Google Postmaster Tools.

This tool provides more insight into how your domain and IP reputation are viewed by Gmail. It's a user-friendly option that lists whether they see the traffic coming from your IP as good, bad, or middle of the road.

Steps to sign up:

1. Go to Google Postmaster Tools  and click Get Started. 
2. Enter your sending domain.
3a. If your company is Self Hosting your sending domain (this applies for some Marketing Cloud accounts and all Account Engagement accounts), please have your IT team or domain Registrar update your DNS to include this TXT record. Then proceed to step 4.  
3b. If the Marketing Cloud is hosting your sending domain, or you are not sure, please contact support and provide this TXT record.  We will provide guidance on next steps.  
4. Return to the Google Postmaster page and verify that the TXT record is setup. If it does not show as verified, click the domain in the list and click "Verify". This will complete the final step if it was not automatically verified when adding the record.

For more information about what information you can see when you have access to Postmaster Tools, please see 'Postmaster Tools' on the Gmail Support site.