I Crashed a Brand's Gmail Reputation

Happy Wednesday!

I've been spending a lot of time inside Google Postmaster Tools lately, and it reminded me of a recovery we ran a few weeks ago that's worth breaking down.

A brand came to us mid-domain migration.

They'd switched their sending domain, updated all the DNS records, and assumed everything would keep working.

It didn't.

Open rates cratered.

Campaigns started landing in spam.

Gmail reputation dropped to "Bad."

Domain migrations are getting more common because of the 2024 Gmail and Yahoo sender requirements.

Your sending domain has to match your "from" address, your org info, and every link in your emails.

That means a lot of brands are being forced to migrate, and when you do, you're starting from scratch with Gmail's reputation system.

I've run this recovery playbook enough times now that the steps are pretty burned in.

Kill Everything Except Preflows

The first thing I do when I see reputation has dropped is shut down all non-preflow automations.

No win-backs, no sunset flows, no re-engagement.

The only flows that stay on are the highest-intent ones: welcome, abandoned checkout, and add-to-cart.

Someone who just signed up or just abandoned a cart is far more likely to open and engage than someone who browsed your site three weeks ago.

That engagement is what rebuilds your sender reputation.

The campaign side is where you rebuild the signals Gmail needs to see.

Shrink Your Campaigns Down to Two Segments

On the campaign side, you're not blasting your full list anymore.

You're sending to two segments only.

The first is 14-day engaged prospects: people who have opened or clicked in the last 14 days and haven't purchased yet.

The second is 30-day engaged customers: buyers who have engaged in the last 30 days.

That's the entire campaign audience during recovery.

You're only sending to people who are already engaging, which means your open rates stay above 50%.

Every open, every click, every reply from these segments tells Gmail that real people want your emails.

Sending to anyone outside these two groups while reputation is down just makes the problem worse.

Once you've locked in these segments and the engagement signals are strong, the question becomes: when do you expand?

Watch Postmaster Every Day

This is where most brands lose the plot.

They make the changes, set the segments, and then just check back in a week.

A week is too long.

Google Postmaster Tools shows your domain reputation, spam rate, and authentication status, but it doesn't update in real time.

Updates come randomly, which is exactly why you have to check it every single day.

Deliverability is priority number one during recovery.

You're watching for reputation to climb from "Bad" or "Low" back up through "Medium" toward "High."

That climb is your signal for when to start expanding.

Expand Slowly Once Reputation Hits High

Once Postmaster shows reputation holding steady at "High," I start widening the engaged segment window in stages.

14-day and 30-day becomes 60-day.

Then 90.

Then 120.

Then back to regular segments.

The full recovery takes about 2 to 2.5 months if you follow this progression and don't skip ahead.

I've seen brands blast their 120-day segment in week two because things "looked better."

They cratered again and had to start over from scratch.

The playbook works if you follow the sequence. The last piece is making sure you never have to run it again.

Build a Deliverability Flag Into Your Process

The part that prevents this from happening again is boring.

We built what we call a deliverability flag.

If domain or IP reputation drops below "High" in Postmaster, the flag gets raised.

When the flag is up, account managers have to check Postmaster before any campaign goes out.

The campaign doesn't send until we've reviewed the segment and volume against current reputation.

It's not that we check before every single send.

It's that the moment reputation dips, the checkpoint activates automatically.

The difference between "we should monitor deliverability" and a forced checkpoint that triggers when reputation drops is the difference between brands that recover once and brands that keep recovering.

If you're going through a domain migration right now, or you've been putting one off, this is the playbook.

Reply to this email if you want me to walk through your specific situation, or book a call and I'll take a look at your Postmaster data directly.

Or just reply to this email. I read every one.

Talk soon.

- Raymond

P.S. Monitor your Postmaster every single day. If you don't, you'll regret it later.