Check your sending domain reputation with Google Postmaster
If most contacts on your list(s) use Gmail for their email address, you can use Google Postmaster Tools to learn the overall health of your domain. In addition, Google Postmaster Tools can be used to help monitor and debug all deliverability issues.
If you send a large volume of emails to Gmail users, you can use Postmaster Tools to see:
- If users are marking your emails as spam
- Whether you’re following Gmail's best practices
- Why your emails might not be delivered
- If your emails are being sent securely
What is Google Postmaster?
Google Postmaster is a free tool provided by Google that will tell you exactly what Gmail thinks of your domain reputation (Good, Medium, Low, or Bad). It will definitively answer the question, "Do I have a good domain reputation at Gmail?". For most senders, at least in the US, Gmail composes a large majority of your list, so this will give you a very important pulse of your overall domain reputation.
In addition, Google Postmaster will also show data about SPF/DKIM/DMARC failures, spam complaints, IP reputation, encryption success rate, and more.
In short, we recommend that everyone setup Gmail postmaster tools if possible. It is extremely useful information to have when monitoring and debugging deliverability issues of all types.
How to set up Google Postmaster
In order to use Google Postmaster, you'll need to add and verify your authentication domains to Google Postmaster. To add and verify your domain in Google Postmaster:
- Go to postmaster.google.com.
- On the bottom-right, click the + button.
- In the box that pops up, enter your authentication domain.
- Next, prove that you own the domain by adding a DNS TXT or a DNS CNAME record.
Notes: Each account needs a separate DNS verification record, and you won’t be able to see your traffic analytics until you complete this step (although you can skip the step and add this later).