A lot of conversations are happening around the changes with Google's policy changes with Gmail and Google Workspace in February of 2024. Like anything with tech changes, everyone is freaking out and all of the pundits are coming out of the woodwork. As a great mentor has always said to me, slow down before you speed up. This isn't the death of email, but it's simply a change (and a good one) that requires us all to get better.
Remember Mail Protection Privacy that Apple announced and it was going to be the death of email marketing? Or a few years back when Amazon Alexa was going to read us all our email so HTML email was going to die? There are dozens of examples here...STOP the fear mongers and get engaged.
If you're in the B2B world, you've seen the message from Outreach (good on them for initiating the conversation). I haven't seen anything from any of the major marketing automation platforms or other "spam" platforms. I call it spam because people learn how to abuse a great technology regardless. I actually think Outreach, Salesloft and many of the others can thrive if they take the correct course.
The pundits will tell you that you need to rotate domains, etc. and while in some cases, I agree, this is not a sustainable approach. Do you really think you can outsmart the Giants (Google, Microsoft, etc.)? How about you just become better??? If you disagree, jump on GoDaddy and buy up all the fastest growing companies domains that start with "get", "try", "email", etc.
The pundits will tell you to switch to Microsoft Office 365, but I have zero clue how this will help you....
Another thing the pundits will tell you is that you need to set up Google Postmaster Tools....I don't disagree for many reasons, but what they won't tell you (because they don't know how email really works!) is the Postmaster Tools was designed to tell you how your sending domain is performing with @gmail addresses and NOT how they're performing with Google Workspace accounts (their business and custom domain offering). Additionally, Google doesn't share with the major marketing automation platforms your spam complaints or the rate.
IMO, it's a great step that Google is making, but it's also complete bullshit that they don't provide tools for you to monitor. One day you could be just sitting there and your CEO comes screaming because she can't send an email to her husband or children because your entire organization has gotten locked out of sending to the Google email network.
Additionally, they've provided zero insight into how long an org will get locked out and what the process is to get unlocked. Typical Google...F*ck them.
So back to slowing down....Figure out how much mail your org is actually sending to the Google from both sales and marketing and then there are some simple calculations you can make whether you should FREAK out or just keep moving.
Just some thoughts to spark a conversation....
