Emails to Gmail account holders are being blocked by Google (1 Viewer)

[DoubleEagle]

A couple of weeks ago, my emails to Gmail accounts start to bounce, being blocked as spam. I send out one or sometimes two emails a week to the Club 875 players, about 120 in total. I always load the email addresses as a BCC so as not to reveal email addresses to everyone. After sending it out, I get a email the next day saying that "Delivery has failed," but only for the Gmail accounts. All the others are delivered as expected.

Here is what is I receive from Gmail:

Your message couldn't be delivered. Despite repeated attempts to contact the recipient's email system it didn't respond.

Contact the recipient by some other means (by phone, for example) and ask them to tell their email admin that it appears that their email system isn't accepting connection requests from your email system. Give them the error details shown below. It's likely that the recipient's email admin is the only one who can fix this problem.

For more information and tips to fix this issue see this article: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=389361.

Remote server returned '550 5.4.300 Message expired -> 421 4.7.28 [52.100.171.200 15] Our system has detected an unusual rate of;unsolicited mail originating from your IP address. To protect our;users from spam, mail sent from your IP address has been temporarily;rate limited. Please visit; https://support.google.com/mail/?p=UnsolicitedRateLimitError to;review our Bulk Email Senders Guidelines. q22-20020a1709066b1600b009930d1379a0si10396843ejr.885 - gsmtp'

My domain host and email provider for my Exchange accounts is GoDaddy and I have called them five times. They have added records to the DNS that are supposed to tell Gmail the emails are not spam. But its not working. They have added records for the SPF and DKIM. Still being blocked as of the latest changes yesterday morning.

I have two Exchange email accounts and and one Gmail account. Same result for all three. I also tried using a VPN. Still no joy.

Does anyone have any experience with this and how to get it resolved? Lots of complaints about this when I search Google. I'm at my wits end.

 

[improviseallday]

My guess based on previous reading about email deliverability- you or someone from that IP address might be sending too many emails that people don't open. Do you share that IP address with someone else? Have you checked the open rates?

 

[DoubleEagle]

My guess based on previous reading about email deliverability- you or someone from that IP address might be sending too many emails that people don't open. Do you share that IP address with someone else? Have you checked the open rates?

Not shared. Have no idea what the open rate is and don’t know how to check.

 

[improviseallday]

Not shared. Have no idea what the open rate is and don’t know how to check.

If you're technical, you can start sending tracking pixels in your email to figure out your open rate.

If not, mail sending services like Mailchimp usually have a free tier and they'll do the tracking for you.

I would take it easy on the weekly updates for a bit. Once you start sending again, make it really easy to unsubscribe so disgruntled people don't click "spam". And maybe consider removing some people who never show up to your games.

You may have done all this already but sharing just in case.

 

[Tommy]

Email providers like Gmail and Microsoft typically don't block single IPs. They often block the entire subnet. So it may not be your IP but someone else in the same subnet.

 

[timinater]

I'll also suggest to try using something like Mailchimp for bulk delivery like that for the next one. They are designed for bulk emails and fairly simple to use.

Could also be that malware on your local machine is routing spam through your IP and got your flagged with Gmail. Would be worth a virus scan etc.

 

[DoubleEagle]

Malwarebytes and Avast are scanning every day. I used to have a Constant Contact business account but I closed it during the pandemic. I will look into that as well as Mail Chimp.

Thank you.

 

[Pony]

I'm guessing that Google has also recently implemented some stronger spam algorithms. I have an account that was averaging about 100 spam emails a day (over 200 at the peak), and noted recently that there's been a marked and significant reduction. Just checked another account that was getting about 20-30 a day, and see that it's only got 1 spam email in it. So Google is doing something, as I seriously doubt the spammers gave up.

NOTE - I don't see spam in my inbox as I've got custom filters that are 99% effective, but I do check my spam folder every so often

SECOND NOTE - crap websites are the reason that I ended up on a spam list. I purchased some gun parts from one site, and within 48 hours started getting spammed. I use various email accounts when doing online purchases, as sites get hacked/injected and databases taken.

 

[pltrgyst]

More and more hosting sites are also banning catch-all email accounts, which banning I personally find a royal pain in the ass....

 

[CdnBeerLover]

I would suggest sending a test email to one of the gmail recipients with their address on the "To:" line to see if it goes through. My suspicion is that the BCC's are tripping a spam filter.