Google Spam Policy Changes

[JenniferT088]

Google recently announced changes to its Spam Policy that will effectively eliminate email open tracking. According to BTB Venture Group, Gmail will now flag emails that have pixels that track whether the recipient opens the email, mark them as “suspicious or spam” and move them into a spam folder. What is Constant Contact doing so that our emails aren't getting flagged as spam or suspicious? Thank you.

[Tara_N · Accepted solution]

Hello @JenniferT088 ,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.  I work in our email deliverability group here at Constant Contact, and keep track of industry changes and updates so I can make sure our customers are setup for success. 

I did find the article posted by BTB Venture Group on LinkedIn, and would like to assure you that most of the content there came from a (yet to be substantiated) claim started on LinkedIn sometime in August.  I can assure that I track our open rates every day, and while there are definitely instances where different receiving domains are pre-fetching the images which sometimes makes this data less useful, there is no evidence to support that simply having an open pixel is going to get you placed in the spam folder at Gmail.  If a sender is having issues with the spam folder or getting “this message looks suspicious” banners in Gmail, it is most likely due to domain reputation issues and not simply because they have an open pixel in their message. 

Industry expert Al Iverson over at Spam Resource posted specifically about this around the time that claim got started on LinkedIn.