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CEO of an email marketing platform here (EmailOctopus). If anyone's curious, here's a chart showing our bounce rate to Gmail addresses over the course of the we

CEO of an email marketing platform here (EmailOctopus). If anyone's curious, here's a chart showing our bounce rate to Gmail addresses over the course of the week: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpUE20UXYAEa_Uv?format=jpg&name=4096x4096 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpUE20UXYAEa_Uv?format=jpg&name=... That's a peak of 90% of Gmail inboxes bouncing – and this has been going on for almost 24 hours.

gkop 6y ago
How do the public gmail addresses compare to the enterprise (used to be G Suite, now Google Workspace) ones?
- sebmellen 6y ago
  I would be very interested to know this as well. I am trying to switch my company over to Google Workspace right now and support has been telling me my signup issues will be "resolved in 48 hours or less." What a joke. And this after we're leaving AWS Workmail because of bounced emails. No luck with signing up so far.
  - Ekaros 6y ago
    SLA of less than 99,5%... Or if there is multiple issues even sub 99%... That really is a joke...
  - joering2 6y ago
    Consider yourself lucky. I have some ad words in "approval" porocess for 6 months now. I kid you not - every Friday I receive email stating that the update will be send to me on Monday (insert date here). Then nothing happens on Monday until Friday comes and I get exactly same copy, only date is different. At this point I literally laugh. About your query I gather that you are concerned about your Ads Disapproval for your Google Ads Account. Observation I understand that this is taking a bit longer as we are working with a limited staff due to Global pandemic and there is another team who reviews the account so there can be a slight delay in the decision I apologize for the inconvenience caused as I understand this is not the answer which you are looking for but be rest assured I will get back to you on coming Friday 12/18/2020 end of business day. For any further assistance, I am just an email away. Sincerely,
  - nikanj 6y ago
    Heavily recommend you don't switch your company over to Google. Microsoft seems to understand that in the enterprise world you actually have to have support personnel, not just an opaque AI without chance for appeal
    - lima 6y ago
      Google has decent support for paying customers.
    - agentdrtran 6y ago
      You can actually appeal things when you start paying.
- CGamesPlay 6y ago
  Anecdotally, my enterprise account seems unaffected.
  - lemonspat 6y ago
    Serious question: how would you know that you are receiving ALL emails from ALL senders?
    - CGamesPlay 6y ago
      Totally valid, and I wouldn't. The status page indicates that "Google Workspaces" is affected, but I don't know if that is synonymous with what I have (which was Google Apps a decade ago, unsure now). All I can say is I was receiving emails during the affected window.
  - piou 6y ago
    Also anecdotally, during the outage, test messages from my non-gmail account to my standalone/non-enterprise gmail accounts consistently bounced; test messages from my non-gmail account to my G Suite Business-associated account went through.
edoceo 6y ago
What's this do to your mail-queue size - let's see that chart
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  Permanent failures, as these are being flagged, don't stay in the queue.
whitepoplar 6y ago
As an ESP, how much of a headache will this be for you in weeks/months to come? I'm guessing this throws a huge wrench in deliverability techniques--how're you handling it?
- shmoogy 6y ago
  I would imagine since it's a known timeframe, domain, and error response, they can cleanly remove the suppression lists. I logged into our sendgrid and mailgun accounts and manually purged all the failed gmail records.
  - rob-olmos 6y ago
    Might also be affecting GSuite/Workspace emails.
  - webbie917 6y ago
    The hard bounce status might be stored outside of your lists. I am not sure customers can easily change a hard bounce status themselves. Do you mean you just deleted those records with intent to re-add to reset the status? On our BigMailer platform this wouldn't work as hard bounce status would get preserved.
    - shmoogy 6y ago
      We use SendGrid and Mailgun right now, and both of these expose the suppression list, email address, time, and reason code + description. In Sendgrid you can filter, and mass select to remove suppressions easily (which was great). In mailgun I had to export a CSV and just removed them manually as there was not too many across my accounts. Customers generally cannot change this on their end as far as I can imagine -- this is on the ESP end and is a protection built in because you are sending from their IP / Server and they don't take kindly to that.
- m3nu 6y ago
  Mailgun added a few new suppressions due to bounced Gmail addresses. Hope ESPs just flush those out.
vxNsr 6y ago
I know this is your livelihood, but as someone who basically never wants marketing emails, all I can think is "nice" hopefully I get auto-unsub'ed from a ton of lists.
- himinlomax 6y ago
  If they normally successfully deliver to gmail, it's safe to assume a large number of people who do receive their emails want to receive them.
  - aksss 6y ago
    That conclusion makes zero sense to me unless counting on the nebulous nature of the descriptor, “a large number”. They deliver successfully to my Gmail account on a regular basis so I must want to receive it? Feels like you’re telling me to stop dressing like a slut. ;)
  - 627467 6y ago
    This is very charitable. How many people live with the nuisance of mailing (they un- or knowingly subscribed to) VS those who actually go through the trouble of unsubscribing/mark as spam in hope to rid of the from inbox?
    - 8fingerlouie 6y ago
      I normally just delete mailing list mails. I don't even read them. This year i decided to do "something" about it, so every mailing list mail received in my inbox that i don't want/care for gets an unsubscribe. It has already reduced my daily mails by a somewhat large amount. It's hard to say exactly how much, but i estimate around 10 emails less every day. Most of the unsubscribed lists are from companies where i've purchased something andthe seller took the liberty of subscribing me to their mailing list. Those are mostly pre-GDPR that i've just never gotten around to dealing with. The execption is of course obvious spam mails, to which unbsubscribing will probably do more harm than good.
- cascom 6y ago
webbie917 6y ago
Thanks for sharing Jonathan, unprecedented situation. And that's just gmail.com addresses we can see data on, while there are all those business domains that use Google Apps for their email that probably experienced a similar issue...

gkop 6y ago

How do the public gmail addresses compare to the enterprise (used to be G Suite, now Google Workspace) ones?

sebmellen 6y ago
I would be very interested to know this as well. I am trying to switch my company over to Google Workspace right now and support has been telling me my signup issues will be "resolved in 48 hours or less." What a joke. And this after we're leaving AWS Workmail because of bounced emails. No luck with signing up so far.
- Ekaros 6y ago
  SLA of less than 99,5%... Or if there is multiple issues even sub 99%... That really is a joke...
- joering2 6y ago
  Consider yourself lucky. I have some ad words in "approval" porocess for 6 months now. I kid you not - every Friday I receive email stating that the update will be send to me on Monday (insert date here). Then nothing happens on Monday until Friday comes and I get exactly same copy, only date is different. At this point I literally laugh. About your query I gather that you are concerned about your Ads Disapproval for your Google Ads Account. Observation I understand that this is taking a bit longer as we are working with a limited staff due to Global pandemic and there is another team who reviews the account so there can be a slight delay in the decision I apologize for the inconvenience caused as I understand this is not the answer which you are looking for but be rest assured I will get back to you on coming Friday 12/18/2020 end of business day. For any further assistance, I am just an email away. Sincerely,
- nikanj 6y ago
  Heavily recommend you don't switch your company over to Google. Microsoft seems to understand that in the enterprise world you actually have to have support personnel, not just an opaque AI without chance for appeal
  - lima 6y ago
    Google has decent support for paying customers.
  - agentdrtran 6y ago
    You can actually appeal things when you start paying.
CGamesPlay 6y ago
Anecdotally, my enterprise account seems unaffected.
- lemonspat 6y ago
  Serious question: how would you know that you are receiving ALL emails from ALL senders?
  - CGamesPlay 6y ago
    Totally valid, and I wouldn't. The status page indicates that "Google Workspaces" is affected, but I don't know if that is synonymous with what I have (which was Google Apps a decade ago, unsure now). All I can say is I was receiving emails during the affected window.
- piou 6y ago
  Also anecdotally, during the outage, test messages from my non-gmail account to my standalone/non-enterprise gmail accounts consistently bounced; test messages from my non-gmail account to my G Suite Business-associated account went through.

edoceo 6y ago

What's this do to your mail-queue size - let's see that chart

throwaway201103 6y ago
Permanent failures, as these are being flagged, don't stay in the queue.

whitepoplar 6y ago

As an ESP, how much of a headache will this be for you in weeks/months to come? I'm guessing this throws a huge wrench in deliverability techniques--how're you handling it?

shmoogy 6y ago
I would imagine since it's a known timeframe, domain, and error response, they can cleanly remove the suppression lists. I logged into our sendgrid and mailgun accounts and manually purged all the failed gmail records.
- rob-olmos 6y ago
  Might also be affecting GSuite/Workspace emails.
- webbie917 6y ago
  The hard bounce status might be stored outside of your lists. I am not sure customers can easily change a hard bounce status themselves. Do you mean you just deleted those records with intent to re-add to reset the status? On our BigMailer platform this wouldn't work as hard bounce status would get preserved.
  - shmoogy 6y ago
    We use SendGrid and Mailgun right now, and both of these expose the suppression list, email address, time, and reason code + description. In Sendgrid you can filter, and mass select to remove suppressions easily (which was great). In mailgun I had to export a CSV and just removed them manually as there was not too many across my accounts. Customers generally cannot change this on their end as far as I can imagine -- this is on the ESP end and is a protection built in because you are sending from their IP / Server and they don't take kindly to that.
m3nu 6y ago
Mailgun added a few new suppressions due to bounced Gmail addresses. Hope ESPs just flush those out.

vxNsr 6y ago

I know this is your livelihood, but as someone who basically never wants marketing emails, all I can think is "nice" hopefully I get auto-unsub'ed from a ton of lists.

himinlomax 6y ago
If they normally successfully deliver to gmail, it's safe to assume a large number of people who do receive their emails want to receive them.
- aksss 6y ago
  That conclusion makes zero sense to me unless counting on the nebulous nature of the descriptor, “a large number”. They deliver successfully to my Gmail account on a regular basis so I must want to receive it? Feels like you’re telling me to stop dressing like a slut. ;)
- 627467 6y ago
  This is very charitable. How many people live with the nuisance of mailing (they un- or knowingly subscribed to) VS those who actually go through the trouble of unsubscribing/mark as spam in hope to rid of the from inbox?
  - 8fingerlouie 6y ago
    I normally just delete mailing list mails. I don't even read them. This year i decided to do "something" about it, so every mailing list mail received in my inbox that i don't want/care for gets an unsubscribe. It has already reduced my daily mails by a somewhat large amount. It's hard to say exactly how much, but i estimate around 10 emails less every day. Most of the unsubscribed lists are from companies where i've purchased something andthe seller took the liberty of subscribing me to their mailing list. Those are mostly pre-GDPR that i've just never gotten around to dealing with. The execption is of course obvious spam mails, to which unbsubscribing will probably do more harm than good.
cascom 6y ago

webbie917 6y ago

Thanks for sharing Jonathan, unprecedented situation. And that's just gmail.com addresses we can see data on, while there are all those business domains that use Google Apps for their email that probably experienced a similar issue...