How long before cold emails are blocked and what are Gmail's policies on cold email?
Summary
What email marketers say9Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Neil Patel's Blog explains that cold emails can still be effective if personalized and targeted correctly, but highlights the importance of following best practices to avoid being marked as spam.
Email marketer from Sales Hacker shares that personalizing cold emails and tailoring them to the recipient's specific interests or needs greatly increases the likelihood of a positive response and reduces the chances of being marked as spam.
Email marketer from Quickmail responds that warming up your email address is essential for cold outreach, simulating human-like interaction with emails to improve sender reputation.
Email marketer from Woodpecker Blog shares that numerous factors affect cold email deliverability, including sender reputation, email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), and the content of the email itself, and suggests strategies for optimizing each of these to improve deliverability.
Email marketer from Mailjet Blog responds that to avoid cold emails being blocked, it's crucial to warm up the IP address, maintain a clean email list, and personalize email content.
Email marketer from Hunter.io responds that factors like having a dedicated IP address, authenticating your domain, and maintaining a good sender reputation are crucial for ensuring cold emails reach the inbox rather than being blocked.
Email marketer from Gmass Blog responds that Google enforces different sending limits based on the type of Gmail account (e.g., free vs. paid Workspace accounts) and the sender's reputation and states that exceeding these limits can result in temporary or permanent account suspension.
Email marketer from Klenty Blog highlights the importance of regularly cleaning your email list and removing invalid or inactive email addresses to maintain a good sender reputation and prevent emails from being blocked or marked as spam.
Email marketer from Reddit shares that they have experienced temporary blocks when sending more than 50 cold emails in a short period from a new Gmail account and suggests gradually increasing the sending volume over time to avoid triggering spam filters.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks shares that applying strict rules to cold leads is currently a gap, although Gmail is starting to address the issue, but their compliance measures are inconsistent and not a complete solution.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that blocking cold emails rarely happens quickly, typically taking 6-12 months to affect corporate email, and even then, it often results in emails landing in the spam folder, with B2B mailers only reacting when their opt-in mail is affected.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that ISPs and mailbox providers use a variety of factors to determine whether to block emails, including sender reputation, complaint rates, and engagement metrics. The time it takes for cold emails to be blocked depends on how quickly these factors are negatively impacted.
Expert from Email Geeks mentions that Gmail is indeed blocking cold emails and being more aggressive about outbound blocking, noting past instances of blocking sales reps exceeding 500 emails a day and recent threats of permanent shutdowns for repeated violations.
Expert from Word to the Wise responds that engagement with your emails heavily influences deliverability. Low engagement signals that your emails might not be wanted and can lead to placement in the spam folder or even blocking, and high engagment helps keep your emails out of the spam folder.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help details Gmail's sending limits, specifying that users are limited to sending a certain number of emails per day to prevent spam and abuse, with specific limits depending on the type of account.
Documentation from IETF states that servers may respond with specific error codes (e.g., 4xx or 5xx) to indicate that an email was rejected due to spam policies or other reasons, providing feedback to the sender about why their email was blocked.
Documentation from Google Online Security Blog explains that Google uses sophisticated machine learning techniques to detect and filter spam, analyzing various signals like email content, sender reputation, and user engagement to identify and block unwanted emails.
Documentation from Gmail Help Center states that when users mark an email as spam, Gmail learns from these reports to improve its spam filters and better identify and block similar emails in the future.