Gmail is ramping up its email sender policy as of November 2025

Gmail is ramping up its email sender policy as of November 2025


Hello marketers,

As you may be aware, Gmail introduced a guideline for bulk senders starting February 2024. If not, here's a quick refresher straight from Google:



After this policy was announced first in 2023 and soft-implemented in February 2024, we hope marketers were following the mandates set by Google. This is because, now, in November 2025, Gmail is ramping up its enforcement of these guidelines. You can check that here.



Previously the mails you sent to Gmail accounts may have landed in spam if you didn't follow these guidelines. But from now, they can get rejected either temporarily or permanently and that's a huge concern that must be addressed immediately if you aren't still following these guidelines.

Who are bulk senders? 

Senders who send 5,000 or more emails to Gmail users (recipients) over a 24-hour period are categorized as bulk senders by Gmail. This email sender policy is aimed at them. The emails sent can include marketing emails, promotional, newsletters, and transactional emails.

Why is this policy enforced? 

This policy is enforced by Gmail to ensure trust is maintained in the communications that happen over email. Other factors include:
  • Protecting its users from spam, spoofing & phishing
  • Fighting against malicious actors who pose as unsuspecting businesses
  • Providing a clean inbox experience for its users by not accepting unwanted emails
  • Introducing a standard for sender practices with their guidelines

What happens if the guidelines aren't followed? 

As mentioned by Gmail, if these guidelines aren't implemented, you can see frequent temporary rejections of emails that will lead to delayed delivery. If you persist, your emails can get outright rejected. That's a big problem that you must tackle beforehand.
  • Emails may be delayed, rejected, or sent to spam.
  • Gmail will block unauthenticated campaigns.
  • Your domain & IP reputation can be permanently damaged.
  • Zoho Campaigns may pause your campaigns.
  • Open & click rates drop sharply due to lower inbox visibility.

What are these guidelines set by Gmail? 

Below guidelines are what Gmail expects you to implement:
  • SPF and DKIM authentication must be set up for your sender domain.
  • DMARC must also be set up for the sender domain. In the DMARC, you can set the enforcement policy as p=none.
  • Regularly monitor your domain's spam rate in Postmaster Tools.
  • Keep spam rates reported in Google Postmaster Tools below 0.10% and avoid ever reaching a spam rate of 0.30% or higher.
  • Maintaining a low spam rate helps senders be more resilient to occasional spikes in user feedback. But, having a high spam rate leads to increased spam classification. It can take time for improvements in spam rate to reflect positively on spam classification.
  • Have an one-click unsubscribe link in your campaigns and it should be clearly visible.
  • Sender domain and IP should have valid forward and reverse DNS records.
  • To pass the DMARC alignment, the domain in your From: address must be the same as the domain used in SPF or DKIM.

For detailed reading and more granular guidelines, please go through this entire article from Google.

If you're still not following the guidelines, your mails will get rejected. To see how you can resolve these rejections, please refer to these troubleshooting steps provided by Google.

We hope this announcement was useful. We kindly request our Zoho Marketing Automation users who aren't following these guidelines to implement at the earliest to have a smooth email sending experience.

Sincerely,
Sai Prashanth R | User Education
Zoho Marketing Automation Team