Checking Domain Settings and Reputation with Google Postmaster Tools

Postmaster Tools is a set of tools from Google for analyzing and improving the delivery of email campaigns on Gmail. These tools provide insight into how your campaigns are perceived by Gmail and their recipients. The set includes the following tools:

• Spam Rate
• IP Reputation
• Domain Reputation
• Feedback Loop
• Authentication
• Encryption
• Delivery Errors

Adding a Domain to Postmaster Tools

1. Go to Postmaster Tools.
2. Enter the domain name and its TXT or CNAME record to verify that you are the domain’s owner.

Once registered, you will be able to use the tools described below.

User Reported Spam

Spam complaint percentage (emails delivered directly to the Spam folder are not included in the calculation). The spam level is calculated only for DKIM-authenticated mailings.

IP Reputation

Reputation of the IP address used to send mailings.

Reputation is assessed by the following indicators:

• High – the IP address has a good reputation, and messages appear in the inbox (General, Suggestions, Social Networks, or Updates).
• Medium – the vast majority of emails arrive in the inbox, but there is a risk that some messages may be classified as spam or rejected.
• Low – most emails will probably end up in spam.
• Bad — with such a reputation, any email will end up in spam or be rejected by SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).

Domain Reputation

Domain reputation in Gmail. If it drops, it is necessary to analyze the mailings made in the corresponding period. A bad reputation leads to mailings ending up in spam.

Spam Feedback Loop

Following Google standards, we transmit information about the campaign type, the sender’s organization ID in Yespo, the campaign ID, and the Sender ID in the Feedback-ID email header.

For example, the bulk campaign’s header might look like this: Feedback-ID: b4111423:2323:broadcast:Yespo.io. The data is decrypted as follows:

• b before the first number – bulk campaign’s identifier; for the trigger campaign, it will be t.
• 4111423 — campaign ID in Yespo.
• 2323 — ID of the sending organization in Yespo.
• broadcast – bulk campaign ID; it will be trigger for the trigger campaign.
• Yespo.io – the name of the mailing service.

When email recipients with @gmail.com addresses report spam, the Spam Feedback Loop graph displays the complaints.

Click on any data point in the graph to see email type identifiers and corresponding spam complaint rates.

Authentication Traffic

The volume of traffic passing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication.

Encrypted Traffic 

The volume of inbound and outbound traffic encrypted using the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol.

Delivery Errors

2 types of errors are displayed:

• SMTP Error 550: The recipient does not exist or is incorrectly specified.
• SMTP Error 421: The message was not delivered due to temporary problems with the mail server or due to exceeding mail traffic limits.

Click on any data point on the graph to see the reason for the error.