New Google Postmaster Tools to Focus on Compliance

Email marketers lose access to two top deliverability indicators on September 30, 2025, when Google deprecates the venerable version 1 of its Postmaster Tools.

The two soon-to-be-gone reports are the IP and Domain Reputation charts. Each offered marketers a simple indication of whether Gmail was labeling messages as spam.

Favored Signals

The IP Reputation chart displayed red, yellow, and green bars, similar to a traffic light, visually indicating whether a sending IP address was well-regarded or not.

Both charts — IP and Domain Reputation — provided uncomplicated email deliverability indicators. If their IP and domain reputation were both “High” in Google Postmaster Tools, senders knew their messages reached Gmail inboxes.

The IP Reputation chart was similar to a traffic light. Green is good.

Unfortunately, simplicity sometimes led to complexity. For example, how can a sender restore its domain reputation if it dropped from high to medium?

Finding the answer in Postmaster Tools v1 required visiting other reports such as Authenticated Traffic, Encrypted Traffic, and Spam Rate. A marketer could use the varying tables and charts to hypothesize and then take action.

Identifying an issue was relatively complicated, but experienced email deliverability professionals could usually discover and correct the problem.

A simple interface works well when everything is going smoothly, but what if the domain reputation drops from high to medium? What was the cause?

Compliance Status

In March 2024, Google released version 2 of Postmaster Tools, the first significant change in nearly a decade.

Version 2 included the Compliance Status dashboard, which provides a simple green or red check to indicate whether a sending domain meets Gmail’s email sender guidelines.

“Compliance status” is not as clear as IP and domain reputation, but the dashboard was a helpful start when, say, open and click rates declined. Email deliverability pros could usually discover and correct problems, such as a slow unsubscribe process.

Understanding Compliance

When the IP and domain reputation charts go away on September 30, email marketers will need to understand the Compliance Status dashboard.

One way to approach this report is to categorize it into technical checks and behavioral aspects.

Technical

Six of the Compliance Status report’s requirements focus on a domain’s technical setup: either it complies or not. Green means “meets requirement.”

• SPF and DKIM authentication implemented. Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) prevent spammers from sending unauthenticated messages.

• “From:” header matches SPF and DKIM. An email “From:” header tells the recipient who sent the message. The requirement is to align that header with SPF and DKIM records.

• DMARC authentication implemented. Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) instructs email servers on how to handle SPF or DKIM failures.

• TLS encryption. The sender employs the Transport Layer Security (TLS) cryptographic protocol to protect message content.

• Forward and reverse DNS records implemented. The sending IP address must have a PTR (reverse DNS) record that resolves to a hostname, and that hostname must have a matching forward DNS (A or AAAA) record pointing back to the same IP.

• One-click unsubscribe implemented. Recipients can easily unsubscribe from the list.

Non-compliance with any of these requirements impacts email deliverability. In Postmaster Tools v1, the errors might have generated a “medium” for domain reputation. In v2, they are clearer.

Behavioral

The remaining two compliance requirements affecting bulk email senders, such as ecommerce marketers, are related to behaviors.

• User-reported spam rate below 0.3%. A passing score is fewer than 0.3% of recipients. The best senders, however, are below 0.1%

• Honor unsubscribes in 48 hours or fewer. Recipients who click an unsubscribe link should stop receiving messages from that specific sending address.

The first of these requirements measures subscribers’ behavior. How many labeled the message as spam?

The second has a technical aspect, but is also dependent on the sender’s practices. For example, a common problem with honoring an unsubscribe is the use of a single sending address.

Imagine a merchant with an email newsletter (content marketing), a promotional list (email marketing), and transactional email automations. If all use the same sending address — e.g., email@example.com — a recipient could unsubscribe from one list but still receive the other two. Gmail would conclude the sender did not honor the unsubscribe.

Knowing that a domain is non-compliant helps to identify what steps to take to correct the issue.

In short, the depreciation of Postmaster Tools v1 marks the end of an era of sorts. Many email marketers have grown accustomed to logging in and seeing a simple color-coded bar for “Domain Reputation” and “IP Reputation.”

The new version reflects recipient interactions and objective sending standards.

Can AI Send the Perfect Ecommerce Promo?

The combination of first-party behavioral data and artificial intelligence may transform ecommerce outbound marketing.

Called “AI individualization,” the goal is to create a personalized shopping experience tailored to an individual’s preferences, behaviors, and buying history.

The Perfect Send

“Internally, we strive for the ‘perfect send,’ when 100 percent of the people who get the message click or engage, and no one opts out,” said Alex Campbell, the chief innovation officer and co-founder at Vibes, a mobile marketing platform.

Campbell was discussing the potential for AI individualization (AI-I), Rich Communication Services, and mobile marketing in the retail sector when he described this 100% engagement, 0% opt-out scenario.

Ecommerce marketers might modify that definition, but the perfect send is when messaging meets a shopper’s need at the moment.

Shopper Expectations

Shoppers who opt-in to email, text, or push messaging want relevant offers.

“We do a customer survey every year…and we always ask a question like, ‘What would make you opt out?’ Two years ago was the first time we heard, ‘You are not sending me enough messages,’” said Campbell.

The folks surveyed had signed up to receive mobile marketing. They wanted to receive relevant and timely product notifications and discount offers.

AI-I can help.

First Party Data

Ecommerce AI-I is possible because online stores can collect first-party data — purchase history, browsing behavior, engagement data — without relying on third-party cookies or providers.

Humans cannot sort through all the data. Even rules and automations would struggle to reveal individual preferences in real-time.

An AI layer, however, can apply even during the deployment of the messages.

Not Merely Segments

Ecommerce marketers typically segment shoppers around common behaviors. A wine merchant, for example, might have a segment for “value wine shoppers” or “premium wine collectors.”

AI-I creates segments of one, such as a customer who buys red wine under $20, prefers Rhône varietals, responds to Friday sends, and often redeems mobile offers.

Composing the perfect send is much easier with a single segment.

Say the wine merchant implements an AI-I tool. This tool can send shoppers Rich Communication Services (RCS) messages and can access both the product catalog and shopper behavioral data.

Testing can lead to the perfect send.

The AI broadcasts an RCS message containing a product carousel. (RCS has app-like features.) The message has two offers: (i) an Argentine Malbec for $18, as recommended by AI based on the data, and (ii) a Portuguese red blend for $17, meant to introduce new wines to this shopper.

The shopper swipes, taps, visits the site, clicks a “Malbecs Under $20” filter, and ultimately makes a purchase. The AI adds the data from these touchpoints to the customer profile, recording the purchase under $20 or adding a note to test copy around value.

Each new message is an experiment, bringing the AI-I closer to discerning what a shopper wants and when.

That process is nothing new. Data scientists might describe it as “individualized multivariate tests” or a “contextual bandit.” It is an established way to identify individual preferences.

What is different is AI’s speed and scale.

Process Details

For the hypothetical wine shop, harnessing AI-I would require initial setup for more granular data collection, data normalization, and integration.

Once it’s up and running, however, the AI-I tool would likely follow a simple workflow for each new customer.

• Base segmentation. Start with broad wine categories based on the initial purchase, such as red or white, sparkling or still, and high-end or value.

• Early engagement. Begin sending messages and track, for example, whether the shopper clicks a Bordeaux at $40, ignores rosé, but buys a Malbec at $15.

• Individual testing. Generate shopper-specific messages. Each one is an experiment. Offer a Bordeaux at $35 or a Syrah at $18. Continue tracking engagement and behavior. Repeat.

• Refine the profile. Over time, the AI-I system identifies probabilities, such as “the customer is 70% likely to purchase when the price is under $20 and the varietal is bold red.”

• Balance with discovery. Introduce a “wild card” wine every few sends — perhaps a Spanish white or sparkling wine — to extend the system’s knowledge of the customer and prevent marketing fatigue.

• Feedback. All clicks, purchases, and opt-outs feed the AI model, both for the individual and to perfect the overall system.

With each iteration, the AI-I gets closer to the perfect send.

Botched Unsubscribes Harm Email Delivery

Email is a communications panacea, connecting businesses to customers and prospects for transactions, offers, and content, provided the messages reach the inbox.

Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and other webmail companies don’t simply deliver every message to the recipient’s inbox. They instead sort, rate, and even block messages based on multiple signals.

The goal of those services is to provide a quality inbox experience for their customers.

Honor Unsubscribes

Unfortunately, even well-meaning businesses can send the wrong email signal.

For example, since leading webmail firms began requiring one-click unsubscribe functionality for large marketing and subscription email lists, some businesses have not properly honored those unsubscribe requests, even when they remove the subscriber in question.

The scenario can work like this.

• An online shop has two email lists: marketing and editorial (newsletter).

• Subscribers can opt in to one or both lists.

• The sending email address, e.g., hi@somestore.com, is the same for both lists.

• A recipient unsubscribes from the marketing list.

• The store removes the contact from the marketing list immediately, but continues to send the newsletter, since the store considers it separate.

• Gmail and Yahoo Mail receive messages from the same sending address, and believe the business has not honored the unsubscribe request.

This subtle failure to “honor” unsubscribes can lead to relatively lower IP and domain sending reputations that, in turn, direct the business’s messages to the promotions tab or worse, the spam tab.

Here’s how to manage one-click unsubscribes for multiple lists from a single domain.

Sending Address

The simplest remedy is changing the email sending “from” address.

For example, an online boutique could send marketing emails from offers@example-boutique.com, and content (editorial) from newsletter@example-boutique.com.

Segregating the sending addresses will help the webmail company distinguish the shop’s various opt-in lists.

The requirement of one-click unsubscribes and unsubscribe headers doesn’t apply to transactional messages, but using a distinct sending address such as orders@example-boutique.com ensures a merchant doesn’t lose access to receipts or shipping notices due to missed marketing unsubscribes.

Unsubscribe Headers

An email “header” precedes the message body and includes info about the sender and recipient. It tracks the delivery path and provides authentication results from SPF, DKIM, and DMARC checks. It may also include additional content, such as how to unsubscribe.

Every bulk email sent, whether the message is marketing or editorial, should include unsubscribe headers like the following:

• List-Unsubscribe:

• List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click

The “List-Unsubscribe” header instructs the webmail provider where to send the unsubscribe request and identifies the subscriber with either an email address or a unique identifier.

The list parameter — e.g., “list=marketing” — is optional, but will help the provider distinguish between a marketing and newsletter list. Thus if it receives an email message with the list parameter set to “newsletter,” Gmail will recognize it as distinct from the “marketing” list.

Finally, “List-Unsubscribe-Post” enables the one-click unsubscribe feature found at the top of some email messages.

List-ID for Clarity

To communicate even more clearly to webmail providers, businesses can employ the “List-ID” header.

This optional field assigns a persistent identifier that associates the message sent with a specific list.

The header takes the form:

List-ID: "Weekly Newsletter" 

The List-ID can clarify the purpose of each message if, say, two email broadcasts share an address or are otherwise difficult to distinguish. Senders managing multiple lists can rely on the added List-ID transparency for improved compliance and visibility.

Most email marketing platforms — e.g., Klaviyo, Mailchimp — allow custom List-ID headers, but many do not. Hence merchants wanting to try this tactic are dependent on their platform’s capabilities.

Postmaster Tools

Once the one-click unsubscribe feature and various sending addresses are in place, email senders should monitor Gmail’s Postmaster Tools, checking the compliance status indicator labeled “Honor Unsubscribe.”

Gmail will change the status to “Needs Work” if it detects subscribers are receiving mail after opting out, indicating a problem with how the business manages the messages.

This compliance report in Postmaster Tools pertains to a business that maintained multiple lists but did not communicate them to Gmail. The result was a ding to the company’s sending reputation.

Precision Pays

Merchants with multiple lists who treat unsubscribes seriously will likely maintain deliverability and preserve customer trust.

The key is ensuring that webmail providers understand the business has multiple lists and properly handles unsubscribe requests.

RCS Interactive Texts Boost Ecommerce

An emerging mobile communication standard could reach critical mass later this year, boosting performance for an already outstanding promotional channel.

The Rich Communication Services (RCS) standard could supersede two mobile message types: Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

RCS enables relatively more message interactivity, making it possible to share rich media, including buttons, carousels, and branding. It allows a mobile device’s native text messaging app to behave like an over-the-top version, e.g., WhatsApp, WeChat, and Facebook Messenger.

RCS is coming to North American businesses. Providers include Twilio, Infobip, and Sinch, shown here.

RCS for Merchants

The RCS standard has been in development since 2007. It became available in the United States in 2015 but took a decade to reach smartphone users. Most Android users had access to RCS in 2023, and after some delay, Apple added RCS support with iOS 18.1 in October 2024. Canada and Mexico had RCS even sooner than the United States, meaning RCS is widely available throughout North America.

However, most RCS messages have been person-to-person and did not take full advantage of the service’s upgraded capabilities.

The next significant RCS step will be business messaging. Companies have to be registered and verified to send RCS messages. Registration often occurs through a third-party, communication-as-a-service provider such as Twilio, Infobip, and Sinch, and ultimately requires individual carrier approval, which can take time.

Yet all signs indicate that RCS will scale commercially in the latter half of 2025. Juniper Research, for example, predicted that some 50 billion RCS messages will occur in 2025. Others believe RCS could be popular with enterprise retailers during the 2025 Christmas shopping season.

Brand identity

One often discussed RCS feature is branding. Because RCS senders are registered and verified, messages use the brand’s name rather than a phone number or short code for identification. Thus, a text message could arrive from, say, “Target” instead of “12345.” It could also show Target’s logo.

Interactivity

RCS supports clickable images. By comparison, an MMS message could include an image up to 500 KB and a separate text link. An ecommerce merchant using MMS might send a product image and a link to the product page. But with RCS, product images are 100 MB (200 times larger) and clickable.

Hence an RCS message could contain clickable call-to-action buttons. A seller might include a “Track My Order,” “Buy Now,” or even an “Order Again” button directly in the message.

Depending on its ecommerce platform and messaging opt-in process, a merchant could conceivably include one-touch order buttons that allow a recipient to tap to order without leaving the messaging app.

Finally, RCS will likely include so-called application-to-person chat. A shopper could receive an order confirmation message, reply to the message via an AI chatbot, and receive rich media link images, interactive maps, in-app surveys, and more.

Metrics

RCS also offers improved campaign tracking, such as open or seen rates, clicks, and types of message interactions.

Performance

Even without RCS, text messaging is a high-performing, if challenging, marketing channel.

Forbes, Sender, Mailchimp, and others place text message open rates above 90% and click rates at 40%. Moreover, shoppers typically respond quickly to texts, often in seconds. And compared to other marketing channels, SMS is inexpensive.

If SMS and MMS have a weakness, it’s the limitations of relatively small images and no clickable elements, which the RCS addresses.

How much RCS at scale can improve on SMS and MMS is uncertain, but there are indications. For example, a 2019 RCS test from Subway and the Sprint Network produced 60% higher click rates than SMS.

Next Steps

Pricing for RCS business messaging is sometimes confusing or at least misunderstood, mainly owing to an á la carte model. Some RCS messages could be significantly more expensive than others, based partly on the template and capabilities.

Thus ecommerce marketers considering RCS should gauge the return on investment carefully and consider a blended approach for campaigns — RCS, MMS, and SMS.

Some merchants may opt to avoid RCS altogether. Regardless, commercial text messaging is an emerging channel in 2025. Services such as Audience Tap and Textual can help smaller merchants get started.