Google just tightened the spam rules - are you in trouble?

Good Morning {{first_name}}!

It’s Monday - and that means it’s time for your CRM Dispatch - an issue where we talk about issues that are in your CRM that you may not be spotting easily!

Well, this one is a doozy…

Google has changed the rules once again regarding spam reports. If you thought 0.1-0.3% was tight, well - buckle up. Now, it’s at 0.1%.

All of a sudden, all of those unengaged contacts you were planning on putting in a reactivation campaign might actually end up hurting you.

Maybe the lead list is not the ‘flex’ you think it is.

Let’s dive in.

Just like churn is normal in business, email lists also experience churn. In fact, it used to be 25%, but now you can expect upwards of 28%. It all comes down to content and whether or not you are giving people what they are actually looking for.

But here’s the kicker - with spam reports and penalties getting tighter and churn increasing, your cold leads and prospects become the primary issue.

If you don’t have those organized and segmented based on behaviour, activities, and funnel stage, it could really hurt your efforts.

About 10-15 years ago, it was all about the size of the list. The more people you had on the list, the more popular you were. And sure, that may still hold true, but the value of the list is how we measure things in today’s digital age.

So, a smaller list with the ideal people is way more important than a large list where you have no idea who is on it or who you are paying for.

Just because a list size is big doesn’t mean it’s a healthy leads pipeline.

What you may see is this - everything looks fine inside the CRM because the contacts technically exist. Then campaigns go out and bounce rates spike.

So, list size becomes an issue when good leads are drowned out by bad leads on large, unsegmented lists. And it becomes harder to spot those who may be likely to hit that spam button.

The stakes are now higher.

Here’s the main issue - all leads tend to be labelled in the lifecycle metric, and they all get lumped into the same list. Some may be closer to MQL, and others haven’t opened an email in a year.

Listen, no one likes a shrinking list.

Sure, bigger databases look impressive in reports, so the contacts stay. But the suppression rules never get built to protect deliverability, and the database keeps quietly undermining every send.

And you have no idea what is going on until a recent send gives you 16 spam reports and 146 unsubscribes, leaving you thinking, “Wait, I thought this campaign was spot-on.”

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Pull every contact in HubSpot or your email platform with zero email engagement in the past 90 days. If possible, segment by last known lifecycle stage.

This list here becomes your liability list. If you need to go back six months for activity, do so. And highly consider suppressing them, unsubscribing them or creating a reactivation segmentation that gently nudges them back into place.

If this is the conversation you have been putting off, 44fjord works with teams to build the foundation that makes these numbers trustworthy. If you want to talk about what a partnership could look like, reach out to the team using the contact form on 44fjord.com/contact

TL;DR

You must stay on top of Google updates, including all deliverability updates, as a single send could ruin everything.

Isn’t email marketing fun?