How do broken links impact Gmail deliverability during domain warming?

Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum shares that links that don't work might signal a drop in the quality of your email, and it will cause gmail to be more likely to send the emails to spam, especially if the IP isn't warmed up.

Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that fixing a broken link in the email footer significantly improved open rates in Gmail during a domain warming process.

Email marketer from GMass shares it's crucial to maintain the quality of your links. They suggest ensuring that during domain warming, all the links in your email are live and accurate to prevent a hit to your sender score.

Email marketer from EmailToolTester explains that it's important to maintain email hygiene and fix any email content issues, such as broken links. Maintaining email hygiene is important for new domain warming.

Email marketer from SendPulse shares that broken links in emails can erode sender reputation, making domain warming efforts more difficult. Gmail and other providers interpret these as signs of neglect or potentially malicious activity.

Email marketer from Reddit explains that broken links can be an issue for Gmail deliverability during the domain warming process. It's seen as sloppy or a sign of a low-quality sender. This will affect deliverability.

Email marketer from Neil Patel Blog explains that broken links can negatively impact SEO, which could indirectly affect deliverability as Gmail might perceive the sender's domain as less reputable.

Email marketer from Mailjet shares that consistently sending emails with broken links damages your sender reputation, especially if it is a new domain that is trying to establish itself as legitimate, as Gmail may flag it as low quality or potentially malicious.

Email marketer from HubSpot explains that keeping your email database clean is important for deliverability. Part of keeping the database clean is making sure to remove emails with bad links or domains.

Expert from Email Geeks suggests fingerprinting could be a factor if the message is the same on both domains. Gmail might think the new IP is someone stealing the message to send as their own.

Expert from Email Geeks suggests that if click rates are in line between old and new domains, then there might be a tracking issue. Prefetching on the old domain is inflating open rates, making the new domain appear worse than reality.

Expert from Email Geeks shares that there are differences in pixel loads between the promo tab and inbox, which may affect tracking accuracy. Additionally, Google might apply reputation to pre-fetching images, and they may not pre-fetch images until they have some history for the domains.

Expert from Word to the Wise shares that ensuring all links function correctly in an email is one of the ways to reduce the chance of being marked as spam.

Expert from Email Geeks suggests that the combination of a new subdomain and broken links in the footer (specifically privacy/unsubscribe links) can negatively impact the reputation of the mailstream.

Expert from Spam Resource explains that emails with many errors (e.g. broken links) are generally a bad idea and can be picked up by filtering. You need to clean up your email.

Documentation from SparkPost explains that quality and relevant email content will improve inbox placement. Broken links are not quality content, and will affect your domain and IP reputation, resulting in lower deliverability.

Documentation from Google Support indicates while not explicitly stated, the presence of broken links contributes to a poor user experience. Poor user experience is a potential flag for spam filters, especially during domain warming when Gmail is assessing sender reputation.

Documentation from RFC Editor highlights general protocol-related errors (like 404 Not Found). While not a direct deliverability factor, hitting nonexistent URLs negatively affects the perception of an email's legitimacy during domain warming.

Documentation from Microsoft Support indicates while not explicitly stated, a major email safety tip is to make sure you trust the sender. Links will need to align with the domain.

Documentation from MXToolbox notes broken links can cause issues as a result of not validating links. MXToolbox provides tools to test your domain health.