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Author: Ajay Goel

Ajay is the founder of GMass and has been developing email sending software for 20 years.

Most email campaigns are click-tracked, meaning every URL is modified to be tracked so that the click is first registered on our server, and then the recipient is taken to the actual URL. In certain cases, though, you may want to disable click-tracking on a few select URLs, such as YouTube links. The reason you may want to skip click-tracking on YouTube links is that regular unmodified YouTube links generate a nice automatic YouTube preview for your email recipient.

Why should certain links NOT be click-tracked?

First, you should know that to turn ON click-tracking, you just make sure the option is selected in GMass settings:

Enable or disable click-tracking in GMass by ticking the “Clicks” box in Settings.

Let’s talk about YouTube as an example. If my email contains a link to my YouTube video at this URL:

https://youtu.be/QKt4Kv9xiRs

Then the email recipient will see an automatic preview in Gmail of the actual YouTube video.

Here’s what the recipient sees in his Inbox:

And this is what he sees when he opens the email:

 

But if this link is click-tracked, it would be modified to look something like this:

http://ec2-52-26-194-35.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com/x/d?c=5398772&l=ccedb989-b898-4897-b7c6-70fdb92bec9a&r=b5da9659-69d1-4707-beb0-a9147dfbf341

In this case, Gmail wouldn’t “detect” that this is a YouTube link, and so the video preview wouldn’t show up.

(Notice the tracking URL in the browser status bar at the bottom.)

This same concept also applies to links to Google Docs and Google Sheets. Gmail provides an automatic preview of the doc when it notices a link to a Doc or Sheet, but if the link is modified to be click-tracked, then that automatic preview won’t show up.

How do you prevent links from being click-tracked?

Assuming you have click tracking turned on in your GMass settings box, then to prevent a particular URL from being tracked, just add the parameter “gmasstrack=false” to the end of the URL. Make sure you do it in a syntactically correct way, though.

This YouTube link:

https://youtu.be/QKt4Kv9xiRs

would be modified to look like this:

https://youtu.be/QKt4Kv9xiRs?gmasstrack=false

This Google Sheets link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZzHfxnODu_ce_cBizD-DHisA-rabdbBAvGhs-CRxAw8/edit?usp=sharing

would be modified to look like this:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZzHfxnODu_ce_cBizD-DHisA-rabdbBAvGhs-CRxAw8/edit?usp=sharing&gmasstrack=false

Whether you use a question mark (?) or an ampersand (&) depends on whether the URL already has a question mark (?) or not. If a question mark (?) is already present, then add “gmasstrack=false” with an ampersand (&). Otherwise, use a question mark (?).

You can easily make this modification directly in the Gmail Compose window.

(Click the “Change” link.)

Add the “?gmasstrack=false” portion to the link and click OK.

Change the URL to disable click-tracking in GMass. This allows a preview of YouTube videos or Google Sheets and Docs to appear in the recipient’s Gmail inbox.

What if you add gmasstrack=false but then turn click tracking OFF?

If you do this, you might worry about the presence of “gmasstrack=false” breaking your actual destination website, but fear not. GMass will always do a final “cleanup” of your links and will remove any “gmasstrack” URL parameters that it finds in your HTML message. And because Gmail automatically sets the Plain Text version based on the HTML version, you don’t need to worry about fixing the URL manually if you choose to turn OFF click-tracking altogether.

How does MailChimp do it?

Whenever I implement a new feature like this, I’m always curious how the most respected company in this space, MailChimp, does this. The regular MailChimp platform does not allow you to disable tracking on selected links, but their Mandrill transactional platform does. Mandrill allows you to disable tracking only on certain links, but they do it via a parameter in the “a href” tag:

mc:disable-tracking

I’ve chosen to do it via a URL parameter, because you can make this change simply in the Gmail Compose window, without having to modify the HTML behind the scenes. For MailChimp, their approach works, because you have easy access to the underlying HTML right in their web interface.

 

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You’re preparing an email campaign, and you send it to a few of your own test addresses, only to find that it’s going to Spam. What do you do? If you’re like millions of other email marketers, you might try a different Subject line, or you might turn off tracking, or you might take out images, all in a trial-and-error attempt to bypass Gmail’s filters and make it to the Inbox.

 

This manual trial-and-error process is exhausting — changing your message, then sending to your test addresses, then waiting to see where the email lands — this is the least fun part of an email marketer’s job.

Our new Spam Solver automates this process, and reports Inbox vs. Promotions vs. Spam placement across 20 different Gmail and Google Workspace accounts, with different filters in place. You can see how your email campaign performs across a range of accounts that have additional filters from well known spam filters like Barracuda, Symantec, and Sophos. Let’s say across the 20 seed accounts, your email hits 5 Inboxes, 10 Promotions, and 5 Spam folders. Try eliminating images, to see if that helps. That didn’t help much? Try sending just a plain text version of your email.

Keep tweaking your email until you get the Inbox placement rate that you want.

How do you use the Spam Solver?

After you’ve composed your campaign in a regular Gmail Compose window, just click the “Spam Solver” button in the GMass Settings box. That’s it … just one click, and you’re off to the races.

Click the Spam Solver button and you’re one step closer to getting your email into your recipient’s inbox.

If you’ve been a longtime GMass user, you’ll notice that we’ve replaced the button “Inbox or Spam” with the new “Spam Solver” button. The old “Inbox or Spam” button would launch the classic Inbox, Spam, or Promotions tool, which showed a feed of emails going into the 20 seed addresses. You can still view that raw feed by going directly to gmass.co/inbox or by clicking the “raw feed” link from the Spam Solver tool. The Spam Solver tool uses the Inbox, Spam, or Promotions tool behind the scenes.

The list of tests and their meanings

Here’s a list of the tests that you can run to vary your email.

Turn Off Tracking
Open and click tracking will be turned off. Tracking is often the culprit when you’re going to spam due to tracking domain issues.

Eliminate Images
All <img> tags are removed and replaced with the ALT text, if available. If your email contains inline images, the inline image MIME part is removed from the message.

Embed Images
Image content is embedded into the email body, as opposed to images being downloaded from a server. Detailed explanation on embedded vs hosted images.

Plain Text Only
Instead of sending a standard HTML and Plain Text email, we send only the Plain Text version. This also has the effect of eliminating open and click tracking, and this will also eliminate images, since plain text emails don’t have links or images.

Remove Unsubscribe Link
If you’re using the GMass-provided unsubscribe link, this variation will remove that link and the sentence containing that link. For example, if at the bottom of your email, you have a sentence that reads:

Click here to unsubscribe.

that is hyperlinked to the generic GMass unsubscribe URL of

https://www.gmass.co/gmass/u?u=OUTBOUND

then that whole sentence and link will be removed.

Send from Ajay’s SendGrid
This will route your emails through our internal SendGrid account rather than through Gmail’s servers. The emails will still show in your “Sent Mail” folder though.

One-liner Test Email
This test replaces your Subject and Message with a simple one line statement to see if your email content might be what’s causing your problem.

Swap Out “From” Domain
This test replaces your actual From address with an entirely different address that we control and that doesn’t send outreach emails. This test is used to determine if your From address or From domain has a reputation problem. Because this test causes a different From address to be used, the emails are NOT sent from your Gmail account. They are sent from the Gmail account associated with our internal From address used for this test.

Make Subject Lowercase
Exactly what it says. It takes your Subject line and makes all the characters lowercase.

What about testing for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC?

If you’re sending your email from your Gmail or Google Workspace account, your emails are usually already SPF and DKIM compliant automatically, without any extra setup on your end. That’s because Google handles this for you. The Spam Solver can’t “test” a different version of your SPF or DKIM setup for you, but you can use our Email Analyzer to ensure your emails are passing SPF and DKIM. In most cases, however, the reason for ending up in Promotions or Spam is NOT because of SPF or DKIM.

What happens when you send a set of emails?

The emails are sent from your Gmail account to the seed address listed on our core Inbox, Spam, or Promotions tool. You can see the emails being sent by watching your “Sent Mail” folder. You can also see the emails arriving in real-time by having a separate browser tap opened to gmass.co/inbox.

All emails will show in your “Sent Mail” folder except if you run the “Swap out from domain” test. In this case, we take your email content, exactly as it is, but send it through an entirely separate G Suite account that we control. The From address, and therefore the From domain, will be among those that we control. The purpose of this test is to determine if your deliverability issue is caused by sending from a domain with a poor reputation. If you find that your email hits the Inbox by using this test, there’s a good chance that your from domain is the culprit in your Spam placement problem. What from address do we use to send your email? We don’t reveal that, but it changes at random — we use domains that we control that don’t typically send email campaigns, and therefore have no risk of being associated with spam. Lastly, because the emails are sent through a G Suite account that we control, you won’t see these emails in your “Sent Mail” folder.

You run a test and most of your emails land in Spam. What should you try first?

The first two tests you should try if you have a Spam problem are:

1. Turn off tracking: If turning tracking off lands your emails in the Inbox, you likely have a problem with your tracking domain. If you’re a cold emailer, keep tracking off in general, since opens/clicks don’t mean as much to you as getting replies.

2. Swap out “from” domain: If this test yields better results, it likely means you have a reputation problem with the domain in your “from” address.

Note: If you haven’t set up a custom tracking domain, we highly recommend it; that’s a good way to keep tracking without putting deliverability at risk.

You’ve run a variation that lands your email in the Inbox. Hooray! How do you apply those settings to your actual campaign?

Every set of tests that you run is actually a new “campaign” as far as GMass is concerned. Because every campaign you send is saved, once you’ve sent a variation that lands in the Inbox, if you want to send your actual campaign to your actual email list in the same way, you can easily emulate what the “spam solver” did in your campaign settings.

For example, if the test that landed you in the Inbox was “Turn off tracking,” then in your actual campaign in your GMass settings, uncheck Open Tracking and Click Tracking to mimic the same behavior. If “Remove unsubscribe link” resulted in the Inbox placement you want, then you can just select the last campaign from the “Prior Content” dropdown, and that will load the exact Subject/Message used in the most recent test.

What do you think?

The “Spam Solver” is a tool unlike any other in the email marketing industry. Please provide your feedback below. Also, if you have ideas for additional “tests” that should be included, mention that too.

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If you’re using the Gmail API to send email, specifically using messages.send, you will likely notice some unexpected behavior with respect to HTML and Plain Text message parts. Like all Gmail API methods that deal with an actual email message, emails must be Base64 encoded before being submitted to the API, so my examples below will show the readable RFC-compliant message and the Base64 versions.

If you’re not interested in the details, here are the important things to know regarding sending emails with the Gmail API:

  1. You can send just a plain text email with the Gmail API, meaning there’s just one “text/plain” MIME part, and that’s it.
  2. You cannot send just an HTML email with the Gmail API, meaning you cannot send a “text/html” part without a corresponding “text/plain” part. If you try to do this, the API will accept the message, but behind the scenes, it will convert your “text/html” part to a “text/plain” part and add that to the message before it sends the email.
  3.  Setting individual HTML and Plain Text parts when constructing your RFC message is useless because the Gmail API will override the Plain Text part with its own Plain Text part, using the HTML part as its basis. Let’s say you construct your email with an HTML part that looks like “<P>hello there</P>” and a Plain Text part that looks like “hi there.” (Notice that one part says “hello,” and the other says “hi.”) When the Gmail API sends your email, your Plain Text part will be wiped out and replaced with a part that is converted from your HTML part. The actual Plain Text part that gets sent will say, “hello there.”
  4. Lastly, it’s important to know that the message that appears in your account’s “Sent Mail” folder is not the same message that is sent to the receiver. In example #2 above, if you try to do this, the “Sent Mail” email will show just an HTML part, but the actual received email will have both HTML and Plain Text parts. In example #3 above, if you set your own Plain Text part, the “Sent Mail” email will show your HTML parts and Plain Text parts just as you constructed them for the Gmail API, but again, the actual received email will have a different Plain Text part that was auto-generated by Gmail from your HTML part. This can fool even the most experienced developer, so it’s important that you don’t rely on what’s in your “Sent Mail” folder as proof of the email that was actually sent. This is likely a flaw in the API, where it mistakenly writes the email to the user’s “Sent Mail” folder before sanitizing and sending the email. The better approach would be to sanitize the email, then write it to the user’s “Sent Mail” folder, and simultaneously transmit the email.
  5. If you choose not to “send” an email, but instead to “insert” the email into someone’s Inbox via the Users.messages.insert API method, then you can set completely different HTML and Text parts and Gmail won’t alter them at all. You can only do this though, if you have OAuth access to the recipient’s Gmail account.
  6. Behavior with DRAFTs is similar. If you call users.drafts.create and you pass in just a “plain text” part or just an HTML part, then the DRAFT will get created properly with just the part you specified. Meaning, you can have a DRAFT containing just a plain text part, or you can have a DRAFT containing just an HTML part, or you can have a DRAFT containing both HTML and plain text parts. If you then call users.drafts.send on your DRAFT object, that’s where things get funky. If your DRAFT object has just a plain text part or both HTML and plain text parts, the email will be sent and received as expected. If, however, the DRAFT object contains only an HTML part, then your Sent folder will show the email as having sent with just the HTML part, but in actuality, the email will be received with both HTML and plain text parts, with the plain text part being auto-generated by Gmail.

The proof is in the pudding

Now that you know the quirks of sending email with the Gmail API, let me show you some examples as proof. In code, I use Jeffrey Stedfast’s MimeKit framework to assemble and parse messages, but for the examples below, I’ll skip showing off the code that generated each message in favor of showing the end result message and Base64 encoded versions. Additionally, if you’re going to use an online Base64 encoder/decoder to test the API yourself, I recommend this one. It’s the only one that gets the encoding right so that it works with the Gmail API, and it’s the only one that properly decodes the Base64 string created by MimeKit.

In these examples, I’m sending email from my G Suite account, [email protected], to a test account, [email protected], that receives mail on a server that I control.

  1. Sending just a plain text email

    The RFC message:The Base64 encoded version:Submission to the Gmail API:
    What appears in the “Sent Mail” folder of [email protected]:What is received by the server for [email protected]:Conclusion: it works as expected!
  2. Sending an email with just an HTML part and NO plain text partThe RFC message:The Base64 encoded version:Submission to the Gmail API:

    What appears in “Sent Mail”:What is received by the server:

    Conclusion: I submit the email with just an HTML part, but the Gmail API forces a plain text part. Additionally, the “Sent Mail” folder deceptively shows that the email was sent with just an HTML part when it was actually sent with both parts.

  3. Sending an email with both HTML and plain text parts, but where we set our own plain text partThe RFC Message:Base64 encoded:Submission to the API:

    What appears in “Sent Mail”:What is actually received:Conclusion: The Gmail API replaces the plain text part that I’ve set with its own that is converted from the HTML part.
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My GMass blog is all about educating people about Gmail, email marketing, and cold email. I’ve spent considerable time improving the blog recently by optimizing it for the best possible reading experience, and that required a deep dive into the blogosphere, WordPress, plugins, and SEO. I read lots of articles, did lots of research, tested lots of things, and ultimately formed my own opinions.

There are tons of generic articles and posts available on the web with mostly useless information about WordPress. A lot of these are written by people who are trying to sell you a particular plugin. In this article, I’m writing to inform and educate, and I’m not selling you anything!

Here are my insights into WordPress blog optimization, what I needed, what I didn’t need, and why. I’m not going to cover basic stuff like “how to create your first post,” because there are already a million articles covering that.

My insights below assume you have a basic knowledge of how to set up and run a WordPress blog, install plugins, write and edit posts, add and edit users, and the like.

Alright, let’s get started. Here are six things that do a lot for my blog, and can work for yours, too.

  1. SEO. Most people entirely MISUNDERSTAND how SEO relates to a WordPress blog. Most WordPress users have heard of a popular plugin called Yoast and know that it “helps with SEO” but probably can’t explain why or how. Let me break it down in simple terms.One of the critical elements of SEO is setting a “meta description” on a page. It is usually one or two sentences with a succinct and informative description of the content of a page. For my blog post on Gmail sending limits, I might want the “meta description” to be this:

    “In this article, I’ll teach you how many emails you can send per day from your Gmail account.”

    This description is what Google will display next to your page WHEN your page shows up in the search results. It is essential to understand this: This description does NOT help your page show up in the search results. Google doesn’t index the meta description to determine the search terms for which it will display your article. Setting a meta description is ONLY important because IF your article is displayed in search results, then the meta description can influence someone to click on it. And that — whether the user clicks — is what determines whether your article’s search results will improve. Get it? The meta description is NOT used by Google to determine where to rank your article. But because it’s displayed alongside your article, it is used by searchers to decide whether or not your article has what they are looking for, which leads them to click. And clicks lead to higher rankings.So then, why is Yoast so popular? Because WordPress doesn’t natively support the ability to set unique meta descriptions on a per-post basis. And that’s what Yoast allows you to do. So, I use Yoast.
  2. What’s changed? If you’re an obsessive-compulsive micro-manager like I am, and you have multiple writers and editors working on your blog, you might want to know what your team has been up to recently.I use a free plugin called Simple History. It’s highly rated and has lots of installs, which is usually enough social proof that it’s legit, especially for a relatively unknown plugin that doesn’t have the brand recognition of something like Yoast.With Simple History, right on my dashboard, I can see who’s posted recently, who’s edited an article, who’s uploaded a new image, who’s commented, and even who’s logged in recently.
  3. Let a non-user see a DRAFT. I work with an artist who illustrates some of my blog posts. She doesn’t have a WordPress login. She emails me the illustrations, and then I set them into my posts. She often needs to see the content of a post BEFORE it’s published so that she can decide on (or get inspiration for) the illustration she will create.When a post is in DRAFT mode, it’s viewable only by logged-in users. I use this hack to allow a non-logged-in person to see an unpublished draft. Of course, you can probably find a plugin that does this, but why install unnecessary software that bogs down your blog?
  4. Ugly vs. beautiful image popups. I use lots of images in my blog posts, usually screenshots. I want my readers to be able to click on them to see a higher-res version. By default, in WordPress, if you link an image to its high-res version, it works as a regular link. The reader clicks, the URL changes to the full-size image, and technically, the reader isn’t on your blog anymore. The user then has to hit the browser’s BACK button to go back to your blog post. That makes for a clunky user experience.It’s much slicker if the image opens in a lightbox. That way the user can X out when they’re done and return automatically to your article. I use this lightbox plugin to make that happen. It’s nice because it automatically works for all my current images that are linked to their high res versions. Also, it’s free.
  5. Comment spam. If your blog is at all popular, you are likely dealing with a deluge of comment spam. (If you’re not getting any comment spam, then I feel for you because your blog is not popular.) Blogs that have “made it” attract comment spam. My preferred methods of eliminating comment spam are:
    a) Eliminate the website field from the comment form.
    b) If you’re doing this after the fact, nullify all the existing author links with this SQL query:

    update wp_comments set comment_author_url = ''

    c) Use Akismet. You might think it sucks to have to pay for something to eliminate comment spam, but it is useful. If you are absolutely opposed to paying for Akismet, you can block comments without a plugin, but I’ve tried it, and it’s not as effective.

  6. Let’s date. It’s important for your blog posts to have dates so that readers know when they were written. If your post is about email marketing, and it was written in 2007, it has much less relevance to the reader than if it was written in 2019.Some blogs don’t have dates on them, and I think those blogs are terrible, and you should avoid reading them. Neil Patel’s blog doesn’t have dates, and that’s precisely why I avoid his blog like the plague. You can still ascertain the age of many undated blog posts by noticing the dates on the comments. But again, Neil’s blog is so deceptive that he’s eliminated dates from the comments too. There’s probably some strategy behind that, but to me it reeks of slime and duplicity. By default, WordPress shows the date that you first published a post. You may have made updates to the post since then, but again, by default, WordPress still only shows the “Published on” date. That’s to your disadvantage because if you update an old post with fresh, new content, you want readers to know that you’ve done it.I like my posts to show the “Last Updated” date instead of the “Published” date if I have indeed updated them since publishing. I don’t use a plugin to do this, although I’m sure one is available. A simple modification to functions.php accomplishes this.

Apply these tips to your blog and enjoy improved results!

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We’ve just launched version 5.0.0 of the GMass extension, featuring a decidedly more modern design. (It no longer looks like a refugee from the 1990s.) Your Chrome browser should update automatically in the next 24-48 hours, but you can also manually update the extension if you’re anxious to get the new look.

To see if your browser has already updated GMass, go to chrome://extensions, and check the GMass version. If it says it’s version 5.0.0 or higher, then you have the update. If it says it’s version 4.x.x, then you have two choices. You can wait for your browser to update automatically, or you can force the update by clicking the “Update” button in the upper left corner when you’re on chrome://extensions.

The new design is aesthetically pleasing and matches our recent branding updates.

 

The buttons to the right of the search bar also fit better into the overall Gmail design and don’t stick out like a sore thumb anymore. But if you hover over them, then they’re highlighted.

Also, our popups have been re-designed to look more beautiful. Here’s the popup you’ll see when you click the Google Sheet connector.

Of course, a lot of code changed as part of this update. If you discover any quirks with the new extension, please contact our support team to let us know.

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Want to learn about setting up email read receipts and how to use them?

“Read receipts” is a helpful feature that notifies you when a recipient reads your email. In this article, I’ll show you how to use Gmail’s read receipts in a step-by-step approach with screenshots.

I will also give you a far easier alternative to track your email opens and overcome the limitations of read receipts! If you don’t have a G Suite account (Google business), this is the option for you!

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Use the links below to jump to a particular section:

  1. What Are Read Receipts?
  2. What Gmail Accounts Can Request Read Receipts?
  3. How to Set Up Read Receipts in Gmail (Step-by-Step Approach)
  4. 4 Problems with Gmail’s Read Receipts
  5. Better than Read Receipts: Using GMass to Track Opens and Clicks

What Is a Gmail Read Receipt?

Read receipts are notifications informing you that a recipient has opened your email. Because they track successful email delivery, they’re incredibly helpful to salespeople or marketing folks sending outreach emails. If you receive a read receipt, it means that your email reached and engaged the right person.

However, all business email users of G Suite can also use read receipts to send fewer emails and reduce unnecessary follow-up calls. For example, say you’ve sent an email that needs an RSVP from a recipient. Unfortunately, you haven’t received a response yet.

Why haven’t you received a reply?

Was there something wrong with the email delivery? Did it go into spam?
Was the message left unread?

Read receipts can help confirm this.
If you receive a read receipt from them, you’ll know that your email was opened.

They just forgot to respond.
You can now craft a polite follow-up email, reminding them to RSVP.

Important Terms

Before I show you how to use read receipts, let me clarify two terms I’ll frequently be using:

  1. Requesting Receipts – when you send an email and add the read receipts feature to it, this is termed as requesting receipts. Your email recipient can then mark your email as “read” once they’ve opened your email.
  2. Returning Receipts – sometimes, you’ll receive an email from a sender that asks you to confirm that you’ve read it. Confirming this is termed as returning receipts.

What Gmail Accounts Can Request Read Receipts?

Unfortunately, personal Gmail accounts (accounts that end in @gmail.com) can’t use Gmail’s read receipts feature.

Gmail allows read receipts only for G Suite (formerly, Google Apps for Work) accounts.

So if you have just a personal Gmail account, here’s how to use GMass to track email opens and clicks.

What are G Suite accounts?
Work or school accounts (ending in @companyname.com or @schoolname.edu) that subscribe to Gmail are G Suite accounts. The administrator of an organization’s G Suite account can allow users in that organization to request or return receipts.

If a G Suite administrator enables read receipts in Gmail, all email addresses allowed by the admin can send and return receipts. However, the admin can make the return receipts feature optional. In this case, Gmail will ask users if they want to send a read receipt when they open an email.

How to Set Up Read Receipts in Gmail (Step-by-Step Approach)

Now that I’ve covered what read receipts are, let me show you:

How do you turn on read receipts?

Here’s a step-by-step guide to set-up read receipts in a G Suite administrator account:

Step 1

Log in to your G Suite account from a browser.

Step 2

From the Google Admin console home page, click on the Main Menu (three vertical lines icon at the top left of the window).

Then, follow this path: Apps > G Suite > Gmail.

This path will take you to the screen below. Then click on User Settings.

Step 3 (Optional – only required if you manage multiple organizations)

Before clicking on settings, click on the Organizations list on the left side of your console. Select the organizational unit in which you want to set up read receipts.

If you don’t have sub-organizations in your console, proceed to the next step.

Step 4

Click on Email Read Receipts to enable or disable the read receipts feature for your users.

Once you’ve clicked the section, you’ll have the following options to choose from:

  1. Do not allow email read receipts to be sent
    This option disables the requesting and returning of read receipts for users in your organization.
  2. Allow email read receipts to be sent to all addresses in my organization as well as the whitelisted email addresses
    Select this option to enable your G Suite users to request and receive read receipts in Gmail. You can also allow specific external addresses to request and receive read receipts from your G Suite users.
  3. Prompt the user for each read receipt request
    This lets Gmail ask users if they want to send a read receipt or not. You can uncheck this box to send and receive read receipts automatically.
  4. Allow email read receipts to be sent to any email address
    Select this option to enable requesting and returning of read receipts from any email ID (within or outside your organization). In this case, a user is always prompted with a read receipt request.

Step 5

Click the Save button at the bottom of your console to apply these changes.

Note – It takes about an hour for these changes to apply to each user account. Changes can be tracked from the Admin console audit tab (they can be accessed from Reports on your Admin Home screen).

How to Request a Gmail Read Receipt

A user can request a read receipt only after their G Suite admin has enabled it. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to request a Gmail read receipt when you send an email:

Step 1

Log in to your Gmail account and click the Compose button to open the Compose window.

Step 2

Add recipients to the required fields of the new email and compose the Subject and Body.

Step 3

Click More options (three vertical dots icon at the bottom right of the Compose window) and click Request read receipt.

 

Step 4

Add your email signature and click Send to send the email message. When a recipient opens your email and clicks “yes,” you will receive an email notification stating who opened your email with a time stamp (as shown in the image below).

How to Send a Gmail Read Receipt

Your Gmail account may automatically send a read receipt based on the settings chosen by your organization. However, if you have to approve the receipt manually, Gmail prompts you with this read receipt request:

One or more senders in this conversation have requested a read receipt.
You can now choose to send a receipt or not.

This is what the pop-up looks like:

Note – If the recipient is using an IMAP server to read Gmail messages in email systems like Microsoft Outlook, the read receipt may be sent automatically. 

4 Problems with Gmail’s Read Receipt Feature

1. Can’t Be Used for Regular Gmail Accounts

The primary issue with Gmail’s read receipts is that they can’t be used with personal Gmail email accounts. If you don’t have a G Suite account, you’ll have to use email marketing programs like GMass to track email opens.

2. Need the G Suite Admin’s Permission

Even if you’re using a G Suite account, you need the G Suite administrator’s permission to use read receipts.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re using the Gmail web app on Chrome, Firefox, or the Opera browser. The same goes for the Gmail app for Android and iPhone — if the admin hasn’t enabled read receipts, you can’t use it.

3. No Guarantee on Receiving a Read Receipt

Sometimes, Gmail lets your email recipients decide if they want to send a read receipt to you.

And what can you do if they choose not to send a read receipt notification?
Nothing.

There’s no way to verify that they’ve opened your email if they decline to inform you.

4. Impractical for Email Marketers

Read receipts can be incredibly helpful for email marketing — theoretically! They could help marketers easily verify if their emails are being opened or not.

In reality, using Gmail to track this is impractical. Here’s why:

  1. In some cases, Gmail’s read receipts have to be approved by the recipient. Unfortunately, most people receiving marketing emails won’t bother to send you a read receipt. Instead, it could annoy them, and they might mark your message as spam!
  2. You have to request a read receipt manually each time you send an email. This can be tiring when you have hundreds of emails to send.
  3. Gmail read receipts only work when you address individual email IDs in the To and CC fields. You cannot use them with mailing lists.

A Better Approach: Using GMass to Track Email Opens and Clicks

If you’re looking for a far easier and more powerful way to track email opens, GMass is the perfect Gmail extension for you!

What Is GMass?

GMass is a powerful, but simple, email marketing tool that lets you run email campaigns from your Gmail inbox. Its powerful mail merge capabilities have made it a popular Chrome extension that’s used by employees from Google, LinkedIn, Uber, and Twitter.

However, it is not aimed at email marketers alone.

The GMass app can also be used by individuals and groups, like schools and clubs, to send emails to their members from their Gmail client.

GMass’s Advanced Email Reports and Analytics

GMass has a powerful Campaign Report for detailed breakdowns of your email statistics. It’s automatically generated after sending an email campaign and summarizes all the core marketing statistics you need.

However, GMass’s reports aren’t your regular mail merge campaign reports.

Unlike other email services, GMass places your campaign reports inside your Gmail account itself. You won’t have to open a separate tool or window to see it — all the data you need is in your inbox!

Let me show you how GMass’s automated Campaign Reports help you track email statistics.

A) Email Open Tracking

The Gmail Problem

Although Gmail’s read receipts help you verify if your emails were opened, it sometimes depends on the recipient. Remember, your recipient can always decline to send you a read receipt.

The GMass Solution

GMass’s campaign-level reports give you two metrics to track email opens in real-time. Opening an email triggers the automatic download of a tracking pixel to measure opens. As GMass tracks email opens automatically, you won’t have to worry about your recipient approving this or not.

You can find these statistics in your Campaign Report under:

  1. Unique Opens – the total number of email IDs that have opened your email. But what if a recipient opens your email multiple times?
    Don’t worry, only the number of unique recipients who opened your email is tracked. Whenever someone opens an email for the second time, it won’t show up on this report.
  2. Didn’t Open – the total number of email IDs that have NOT opened your email. 

Additionally, whenever a recipient opens your email, a notification is added to the GMass Reports > Opens label in your Gmail inbox. This makes tracking your email opens a breeze!

B) Email Link Tracking

The Gmail Problem

The Gmail client doesn’t let you track the number of link clicks in your Gmail messages.

Why does link tracking matter?
Without link tracking, you won’t know how many recipients are engaging with the content in your email. They could just open your mail and ignore everything it contains.

The GMass Solution

GMass’s mail merge campaigns can accurately track link clicks in your emails. When someone clicks on a link in your email, a mention is added to the GMass Reports > Clicks label in your Gmail inbox. The following metrics are tracked:

  • who clicked your links
  • the click rate per link

With GMass’s link tracking, it becomes incredibly easy to measure your subscriber engagement.

You can find this statistic in the report under:

Unique Clicks – the total number of unique email IDs that clicked at least one link in your email. 

This click tracking feature can be used to track links and determine the most attractive anchor texts in your emails. For more information on click tracking with GMass, click here.

C) Replies, Bounces, and Blocks

The Gmail Problem

The Gmail client cannot track bounces, replies, block-notifications, and other types of email replies. This is an issue as you can’t measure email variables like:

  • Did the emails reach the intended contacts?
  • Which responses require your immediate attention?
  • What email IDs are incorrect?
  • Who needs to be removed from the mailing list?
The GMass Solution

GMass, however, automatically organizes and tracks replies to your Gmail messages using its Auto-Reply Management feature.

GMass’s Campaign Report summarizes reply stats under:

  1. Replies – the total number of email addresses that replied to your campaign.
  2. Bounces – the total number of emails that came back as undeliverable because the address is invalid.
  3. Blocks – the total number of emails that came back as undeliverable because the address rejected your email as spam.

After you’ve sent an email campaign via GMass, all replies, bounces, and blocks to your campaign are categorized under these labels. Whenever you need to take stock of your responses, look at these stats for all the information you need.

D) Mass Emailing

The Gmail Problem

It’s highly impractical to rely on Gmail’s read receipts when you’re sending hundreds of emails.

Why?

You’ll have to request a read receipt manually each time you send an email. Plus, you’ll have to send each recipient a separate email for the read receipts to work. That is going to take forever!

The GMass Solution

GMass, however, automates and streamlines this service. It uses open tracking, click tracking, and auto-reply management to generate accurate reports on all emails that you send.

You won’t have to lift a finger — GMass does it all for you!

3 More Ways GMass Increases Open and Conversion Rates

In addition to its powerful campaign reports, GMass has tons of other solutions for your email sending needs.

1. Automatic Follow-Ups

What do you do if a recipient doesn’t respond to an important email?

You send follow-up emails as reminders.

But what if you have to send reminders to hundreds of people?
Doing that manually is impossible!

However, with the GMass browser extension, you won’t have to do all that manual work.

Instead of manually following up on each email – GMass automates it for you!

GMass has an automated email follow-up service for your campaigns. It lets you customize everything about these follow-up reminders such as:

  • The number of follow-ups you send to each recipient.
  • Each follow-up message.
  • The time gaps between follow-ups for a recipient.

Click here for a detailed guide on automatic follow-ups in GMass.

2. Personalization

If you want to boost your conversions, you’ll have to personalize your emails.

You’ll have to address a recipient by their name or reference their company to increase your chances of receiving a favorable reply.

Why?
Personalizing your emails makes them more relevant to your recipients.

Think about it.

What would you rather receive?
A generic, bland email or one that’s carefully personalized and addresses your needs?

But you can’t manually personalize hundreds of emails at a time, right?

Luckily, GMass offers you an automated personalization service to streamline this process. You get features such as:

    1. Auto First-Name Detection – GMass auto-detects a person’s first name from their email address and automatically inserts it in your email.
    2. Customize links and URLs – you can include customized links and URLs for each recipient in your emails.
    3. Include a personalized image – GMass lets you add a unique image for each recipient in your campaign.
    4. Personalize entire paragraphs – you can automatically customize large blocks of text on a person-by-person basis in your Gmail messages.

3. Break Gmail’s Sending Limits

Did you know that your Gmail web account has an email sending limit?

You can send only 500 emails every 24 hours using a Gmail account, while you can send up to 2,000 emails every 24 hours with a G Suite account.

The GMass browser extension, however, allows you to bypass this limit when sending emails that aren’t time-sensitive.

With GMass, you can send up to 10,000 emails at a time! 

How?
The tool automatically distributes these emails over several days based on your Google account’s sending limit.

For example, say you’re sending an email to 6,000 addresses from a G Suite account. When you click the GMass button, 2,000 emails are sent immediately. The next 2,000 are sent 24 hours later, and the final 2,000 will go out 48 hours later. This way, you won’t have to log in for three successive days to send all your emails.

Conclusion

Gmail’s read receipts weren’t designed as a reliable method for tracking email stats. If you’re looking for a comprehensive email tracking app, why not try out the GMass Gmail extension instead?

The tool has everything you need to quickly send, manage, and track your emails in seconds. Download the GMass Chrome Web plug-in today and try it out for free!

See why GMass has 300k+ users and 7,500+ 5-star reviews


Email marketing. Cold email. Mail merge. Avoid the spam folder. Easy to learn and use. All inside Gmail.


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Creating a Gmail group allows you to send emails to multiple people without adding each Google account or group member individually.

In this article, I’ll briefly explain what email groups are and show you how to use email groups in Gmail.

However, the group email Gmail approach isn’t as picture-perfect as it seems — it’s a tiring process, and you can’t personalize emails or follow up effortlessly. That’s why I’ll also highlight a simpler, more powerful alternative for group mailing.

This Article Contains:

(Click on the links below to jump to specific sections)

Let’s dive in.

What Are Email Groups?

Note: This section is only for people unfamiliar with Gmail and Google Groups. Feel free to skip ahead to the walkthrough on using Gmail groups.

An email group (contact group) is a collection of email accounts to which you send emails. When a group owner sends an email to an email group, all the email contacts in that group label will receive the same email.

Creating groups in Gmail is one of the quickest ways to send multiple emails.
Instead of manually adding multiple recipients, you’re directly adding the contact group label to your email address field instead.

But is a Gmail group different from a Google Group?
Yes!

A Google Group is basically a discussion group for multiple people with similar interests.

Each Google Group has a group email account and a single, shared inbox.
Additionally, you can use the group settings to set a Google Group’s group type as:

  • Email List: for sending emails to/from a single email ID.
  • Q&A Forum: for asking or answering questions.
  • Web Forum: for community members with similar interests.
  • Collaborative Inbox: to assign topics for each group member and track them.

Unlike Google Groups, a Gmail group is only a Gmail distribution list — it’s a collection of email addresses. It doesn’t have a common group account ID, group type, or collaborative inbox.

Go back to Contents

Now that you know what email groups are, I’ll show you how to use them in Gmail:

How to Use Email Groups in Gmail (Step-by-Step Guide)

I’ll go over how you can:

Let’s get started with how to create a Gmail group:

A. How to Create a Gmail Group

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to create a group in Gmail to send mass emails:

Step 1

Log in to your Gmail account and click the Google Apps icon.

google icon

From the drop-down list that appears, choose the Contacts option.

contact icon

This drop-down list contains a suite of apps (like Google Calendar and Google Doc) that you get when you sign up for a Google account or Google Workspace account (formerly known as G Suite).

Alternatively, you can create Contact groups by visiting your Google Contacts page.

If you’re creating group email Gmail lists on the Gmail app for Android or iPhone, click on the Contacts option from the app’s sidebar to create contact groups.

google contacts page

Step 2

Go through the Gmail contact list displayed on your screen.

To form the group email Gmail list, choose the multiple contacts you want in your new group by clicking the checkbox on the left side of each contact.

multiple contacts

Step 3

Now click on the Gmail labels icon to create a Gmail group with the bunch of email addresses you’ve selected.

manage labels

Step 4

From the drop-down menu that pops up, click on the Create label option to name your Gmail distribution list using a new label.

create label

Step 5

In the Create label pop-up window, you can customize the contact group label. Once you’ve added a name for your new label in the dialog box, click Save to create a Gmail group.

sample save

If you want to create a new label or new group for your mass emails with another set of Gmail contacts, you can repeat this process. But ensure that when you use the Create label button, you create a new label for the distribution group to avoid confusing it with your other groups.

sample contacts

Note: After you create a new group, the group name will be displayed under Labels in the left sidebar of your Google Contacts screen. The figure next to the group name indicates the number of members in that distribution group.

Once you’ve created an email group for your account, you can instantly send the same outgoing email to every individual in the new contact list.

B. How to Send Group Emails in Gmail

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to send bulk emails to your group email Gmail list:

Step 1

Open Gmail and click the Compose button above the left sidebar (indicated by an arrow in the screenshot below).

compose email

Step 2

Type the group name in the To, CC, or BCC field of the new message.

new messsage

Note: When you press the enter key after typing the group’s name, you’ll be able to see the individual email ID of each group member.

Step 3

Compose your subject and new email message. Click Send to send the bulk email.

But what if you need to add another email account to an existing Gmail group?
No problem!

C. How to Add Contacts to a Gmail Group

Here are the steps on how to add multiple contacts to a Gmail email group:

Step 1

Open the Google Contacts page and select contacts from your Gmail contact list that you want to add to an existing group.

add contacts

Step 2

From the Manage labels drop-down list, choose the existing group you want to add the new contact to.

sample group contacts

Step 3

Click Apply in the drop-down list that appears.

The selected contacts will now be added to the existing contacts list in your email group.

Okay, but what if you want to remove an email account (contact) from existing Gmail labels?
Here’s how…

D. How to Delete Contacts from a Gmail Group

Follow my step-by-step guide on how to delete Gmail contacts from an existing group:

Step 1

Open your Google Contacts page and open the Contacts option (or My Contacts for email users with older Gmail versions) from the sidebar. Then, select contacts you want to remove from your email group.

Step 2

Click on the label icon, and from the Manage labels drop-down menu that appears, choose the label name (name of the group) from which you want to remove the contacts receiving mass emails.

Now, this is where it can get tricky.

When you added a new contact to a group, you had to checkmark the Gmail labels you wanted. However, that process is reversed when removing contacts from the group email address list.

After you select contacts, you’ll have to uncheck the label name of the label from which you want them removed (in the Manage labels menu).

uncheck label name

Step 3

Click Apply in the drop-down menu. The selected contacts will be deleted from that email group immediately.

apply contacts

Go back to Contents

While Gmail email groups let you reach out to multiple recipients, it has significant drawbacks.

3 Problems with Using Gmail Email Groups

Here are three problems that make Gmail email groups unideal for group and bulk emailing:

1. It’s a Manual Process That’s Tiring and Error-Prone

While you can easily send group emails in Gmail, creating a bulk email group is still tedious and time-consuming.
You have to manually go through your Gmail contact list to identify the right group of people.

Do you really want to wade through hundreds of email IDs to find the ones you want?

With this manual approach, you’ll probably overlook an email ID or mistakenly add someone as a group member.

2. Follow-Ups Are Difficult

Let’s say you have an email group with many members.

You’ve sent an email to the group, but for some reason, multiple people in the group didn’t respond.

What do you do now?
You send a follow-up email reminding them to respond, right?

But remember, as you’ve sent the email to a group, you can’t simply click Reply to remind a specific member to respond.

Doing so will send the same email follow-up to everyone in the same group — even those who did reply to your mail.

As a result, you’ll have to painstakingly draft a follow-up email for each email address and send multiple emails manually. And that’s not an ideal scenario when you have tons of follow-ups to send.

3. Lack of Personalization: Can’t Add Individual Names

Gmail can’t automatically add personalization variables like contact information, a person’s name, or their company’s name to your group emails. You can only compose a generic message for all the members of your email group.

Why does that matter?
You can’t customize your group emails on a person-by-person basis!

Every member of your email group will receive the same generic message that might not address their individual concerns and needs. This could ruin your chances of making a connection, and your mail might even end up in their spam folder.

Think about it.
What would you rather receive:

  • A generic, bland email that looks like spam?
  • Or one that’s carefully detailed and tailor-made for you?

Go back to Contents

A Better Approach: How GMass Helps You with Email Groups

While Gmail is still a convenient tool, it has some drawbacks in sending mass emails to the same group.
Fortunately, those drawbacks can be quickly addressed.

All you need is a powerful Gmail extension like GMass to cover all your email needs and change your entire outlook on group emailing!

What Is GMass?

gmass

GMass is a powerful mass email tool that works entirely inside Gmail. Its advanced outreach capabilities have made it a popular emailing tool used by employees in major companies like Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Uber.

GMass can also be used by individuals, solopreneurs, and groups like schools and churches to send bulk emails from their email account to a target audience.

But how does GMass help with group emailing?
Here’s how:

How to Build an Email Group in GMass

GMass gives you two simple ways to quickly build and use an email distribution list in Gmail:

  1. Using the Build Email List Feature
  2. Using Google Contacts

A. How to Build an Email Group Using GMass’ Build Email List Feature

With GMass’ powerful Build Email List feature, you can easily find the right people and add their IDs to your Gmail mailing list.

Here’s how to use the Build Email List feature for your email campaign in four simple steps:

1. Log in to your Gmail account and perform a Gmail search.

For example, if you want to create group emails for a book club, run a Gmail search for “book club.” Now all the emails having that term will pop up in your Gmail inbox.

2. Click the Build Email List button (red magnifying glass).

build email list

3. A Gmail Compose window pops up with the required email IDs in the To address field.

4. Compose your new email and hit the GMass send button.

Don’t worry about manually saving this collection of email IDs for your email campaign. The same group is automatically saved the moment you create it.

B. How to Build an Email Group Using Google Contacts

You can also use Google’s Contacts app to add multiple recipients to your GMass email campaigns instantly:

1. Click on the Google Apps icon on the top-right corner of your Gmail inbox, and click on Contacts under the dropdown menu.

2. From the Google Contacts screen, select all the contacts you want to add as recipients and click the email icon.

email icon

3. A Compose window with the selected list of contacts (email addresses of people) in the To field appears.

4. Compose your new email message and click on GMass to send your email.

compose mail

After you’ve done this, your Gmail mailing list (group) from the Contacts app will be saved in your inbox.

To send emails to these multiple contacts in the future, simply launch the Gmail Compose window. Then, select your saved mailing list by clicking on the Connect to an email list or past campaign button next to the Bcc field button.

click on the gmass icon

Lastly, compose your email message and click the GMass button.

Do you keep your contacts list on a spreadsheet, such as an Excel CSV file or Google Sheet?
No problem!

Read my detailed guide on how to build an email group in GMass using a CSV file.

But wait, I’m sure you have some questions:

  • Do you have to create new mailing lists each time you send a group email or bulk email campaign?
  • Do you have to save it under a group name manually?

With GMass, you don’t have to worry about any of that.

GMass automatically saves the email distribution list the moment you create it.

Once you create a Gmail mailing list, it’ll show up in your Gmail inbox, and you can instantly add it to every email you send. This way, you can quickly send emails to the same mailing list anytime you want.

Need more reasons to start using GMass?

Why You Should Use GMass to Send Emails

Here are seven more reasons why you should use GMass to send your emails:

  • Automatically personalize your bulk emails, including their subject line, paragraphs, links, images, attachments, and more.
  • Create sequences to send out automated follow-up emails to group members directly from your inbox. You can easily customize these automatic follow-up emails, the time gap between them, the number of follow-ups to send, and more.
  • Analyze your group email performance (including the open rate, response rate, bounce rate, and more) using detailed email analytics reports generated in your Gmail inbox.
  • Email scheduling lets you schedule your emails to automatically go out at the right time so that they reach your group members when they’re most likely to engage with you.
  • Send behavior-based email campaigns automatically customized to how group members responded to your previous emails.
  • Save any email you send group members as a template so you can reuse them at any time for your future mails.
  • Access GMass’ powerful capabilities on your smartphone through the GMass add-on for the Gmail app on Android.

To start using GMass for free, simply download the Chrome extension and sign up using your Gmail account.

Go back to Contents

Final Thoughts

Creating and sending a group email in Gmail can be a tiring and error-prone process.

Fortunately, with a robust email tool like GMass, you wouldn’t need to worry about any of this.

With GMass’ advanced personalization, easy scheduling, automated follow-ups, and an add-on for the Gmail app on Android, you’ll have everything you need to create custom group emails and use them effectively.

Why not try GMass today and send group emails the easy way?

Ready to transform Gmail into an email marketing/cold email/mail merge tool?


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Want to learn about the BCC email feature and how to use it?

In this article, I’ll show you how to use the BCC function in Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail correctly.

I’ll then explain when you should use the blind carbon copy field and four critical problems associated with the BCC method.

And super important…

Believe it or not, the BCC address field is an outdated approach to send emails to multiple recipients.

That’s why I’ll also give you a really easy and effective way to send emails to multiple people.

BCC Email: Table of Contents

(Click on the links below to jump to specific sections.)

FAQ

However, before we get started, let’s get familiar with a few terms commonly associated with the BCC feature.

Here’s a breakdown of the terms I’ll be using in this article

  1. Recipient: the person who receives your email.
  2. Primary recipient: refers to the main addressee of your email (the person addressed in the To field).
  3. BCC/CC recipient: additional recipients who receive copies of your email (they are not addressed in the To field but the CC or BCC fields).
  4. Email list/mailing list: a large group of email addresses to which you send an email.

Now that you know what these terms mean, let’s dive deeper into what BCC means.

BCC Email Frequently Asked Questions

What Is BCC in Email?

The abbreviation BCC stands for “Blind Carbon Copy” or “Blind Courtesy Copy,” and it’s a feature that helps you send an email to multiple email addresses. The term “carbon copy” comes from carbon paper used to make copies of original documents.

When you enter a recipient email address in the BCC field, that address receives a blind copy of the email. And the primary recipient of the BCC’d mail will not be aware of the BCC’d recipient.

In other words, an address included in the BCC field is “blind” or hidden from every other email recipient. Although a BCC’d recipient can see the direct recipient, they can’t tell who else was BCC’d in the email.

However, while your BCC recipient can’t tell who else has been added, they will know that they were BCC’d in the email.

How?
The BCC label lets them know that they weren’t the only BCC recipients of your email.

Here’s what the primary recipient would see:

Here’s what a BCC’d recipient would see:

We’ve now covered what BCC is.

However, there’s another feature, CC, that also lets you email multiple recipients.
Let’s see how they differ from each other.

How Is BCC Different from CC?

Pretty much every email program or mail app comes with a Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) feature and a Carbon Copy (CC) feature. While both these features help you send an email to additional recipients, they differ in intent.

What makes them different?
The main difference between the BCC field and the CC field lies in the privacy of the recipient.

When you use CC, the email addresses in the CC field are public to all recipients of the email. In other words, CC makes the email addresses viewable to all recipients. That lets everyone know who else received the message.

But with the BCC feature, any email recipient in the BCC field is hidden. While everyone can see who is in the To or CC line (the primary recipient), no one in the To or CC line can see the BCC email address.

Can email recipients see BCC?

No. Only the person being BCCed will see that they specifically were BCCed. No one else receiving the email will even know you BCCed someone on it.

Can I send a group email BCC?

Yes. It’s fairly common to send a group email BCC, and there are two main reasons for why would BCC be used in email.

One, you don’t want people in the group to see who else received the email. And/or two, you don’t want the email to turn into a big long chain of replies. If someone is BCCed and they reply all to an email, no one else who was BCCed will receive their reply — so BCC can cut down on overflowing inboxes from particularly active group emails.

Do BCC recipients know they are BCC?

Yes. They’ll see in the header that they were BCCed. They’ll be able to see everyone who the email was sent To and everyone who was CCed, but won’t be able to see who beyond them was BCCed.

How to Use BCC (aka the Blind Carbon Copy Feature): Step-by-Step Guide

Here’s a walk-through guide on using the BCC field to send emails to multiple email recipients from your computer and Android or iOS mobile device.

I’ll illustrate the process for:

Note: you can usually use these steps as a template for an email service provider like Yahoo Mail or AOL.

Microsoft Outlook

Step 1

Log into your email account (or use an alias or alternative email address if you have one). Under the Home tab in the Outlook email window, click on “New Email.”

Step 2

A new message window opens up. To add BCC recipients, select the Options tab on the Menu bar and then click on “BCC.”

Step 3

Click on the “Message” tab in the Menu bar and enter the email address of the primary recipient in the To field.

In the BCC field, type the email address of your BCC recipient.

For multiple addresses or a long list of recipients, you can separate each with a comma, space, or by pressing the enter key.

Now, you can compose the message and then click “Send” when done.

Note: Peter is the intended recipient of this email, and I’ve included John in the BCC line.

In this case, while John will know that he’s a BCC recipient and Peter is the primary recipient, Peter won’t know that I’ve sent a copy of the message to John. 

Gmail and Google Workspace

Step 1 

Log in to your email account and click “Compose” to open the Compose window.

Step 2

Enter the email address of the original recipient in the To field of the new email. You can separate multiple addresses for a long list of recipients using a comma, space, or by pressing the enter key.

To add recipients to the BCC list, click on the Bcc button on the header, as shown below.

Step 3

Once you’ve clicked the Bcc button, the BCC field will appear. Add the email ID of each hidden email recipient in the field. Now you can compose the message and click “Send.”

Note: Here, I’ve included Peter as the intended recipient, and I’ve put John on the BCC line.

On receiving my email, Peter won’t know that I’ve sent a copy of the message to John. However, John will see Peter as my primary recipient and himself as a BCC recipient.

Apple Mail

Step 1

Log in to your Apple email ID online on icloud.com.

If you’re using an Apple device, launch the built-in macOS email client and click the New Email icon.

Step 2

In the New Message window that appears, click on the drop-down arrow located at the top and select the “Bcc Address Field.” The BCC field will now be displayed in your message header.

Step 3

Enter the email address of your primary recipient in the To field.

In the BCC field, type the email address of your recipient.

If you’ve got multiple addresses to send to or a long list of recipients, you can separate each with a comma, space, or by pressing the enter key.

Now, draft your message and then click on the Send Mail icon when finished.

Note: In this email, Peter is the intended recipient. And John is a part of the BCC line.

Here, John will know that he is a BCC recipient for this email and that Peter is the primary recipient. However, Peter would be unaware that I’ve sent a copy of the message to John.

Now that you know how to use the BCC field in Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail, I’ll cover a couple of scenarios when it’s perfect to use the BCC field:

Why Would BCC Be Used in an Email?

Here are three scenarios in which the BCC field is helpful in an email chain:

1. When You Want to Maintain Privacy

BCC helps protect the privacy of your secondary recipients by keeping those email addresses confidential.

Alternatively, you can use it if you simply don’t want the recipients to know who else was added to the communication loop.

This can happen when:

  • You are sending emails to a list of multiple recipients, such as the members of a club.
  • Your boss or office colleague wants to stay in the loop about an email conversation with a customer, without the customer’s knowledge.
  • Your client wants to receive a notification when you send emails to a third party without their email address being disclosed.
  • You are sending a forwarded email to a group and need to keep your boss or colleague informed.
  • You are sending emails to external recipients (recipients outside your Google Workspace organization) and need to keep the identity of internal recipients (recipients within your organization) private.

In these cases, it’s helpful to use a BCC list.

Using the BCC email feature helps you maintain the privacy of your recipients because:

  • Primary and CC’d recipients of the email can’t see recipient addresses in the BCC field.
  • Your BCC’d recipients can’t see the email IDs of other undisclosed recipients in the BCC list. They’ll only see their email address in the BCC line.

2. When Someone Has Introduced You to Someone

When it comes to introductory emails, it’s polite to include the person who introduced you in your response mail. This notifies them that you’ve followed up on the introduction.

However, adding them to the To or CC list makes them a recipient of all incoming messages to the original email.

By BCC’ing them, they’ll know that you’ve responded to the introduction. You can simply forward all relevant future emails to them if they require updates on your progress.

3. When you don’t want someone to get any replies to a group email

When you BCC someone, they’ll receive any “Reply All” messages from people in the To field or CC field. However, they won’t receive any “reply all” messages from other BCC recipients.

This can be useful with a large email chain that’s susceptible to lots of replies. By BCCing recipients, you help keep their inbox clear of (theoretically) extraneous reply-all emails.

However, the BCC feature isn’t foolproof and has some drawbacks.
Let’s look at the major issues you may face when using this method.

3 Key Problems with the BCC Method

Here are three problems commonly associated with using the BCC method:

1. Creates Suspicion among BCC’d Recipients

As all your BCC email addresses know that they aren’t the only recipients of your message, it could create a sense of suspicion. They’ll start questioning who else was copied to this mail, making it an inappropriate tool for formal conversations.

2. No Personalization

Whether it’s BCC in the Outlook email client, Gmail, or any other email provider, the BCC feature doesn’t allow you to personalize your emails. When composing an email, the original sender can only personalize it for your primary recipient.

Why?
If you add the names of your BCC’d recipients to the email thread, they’re no longer hidden!

But without personalization, your BCC’d recipients will receive an email that omits their names and needs.

It’s far harder to make a connection with someone by simply copying them onto a generic email or adding them to an email conversation that wasn’t written specifically for them.

Additionally, adding them to the email conversation in secret could make them wonder why you added them in the first place.

3. Error-Prone

Manually adding tons of email IDs to the same email is a tedious and error-prone process.

You can:

  • Misspell an email address
  • Forget to add someone
  • Mistakenly add someone as the primary recipient
  • Add a BCC recipient in the CC field

The list is endless!

But is there a way to address all these issues and still benefit from using the BCC field?
Of course, there is!

Just use GMass.

A Better Approach: How GMass Helps You Privately Send Mass Emails

Using BCC in an email thread is useful when you want to maintain the privacy of recipients or when you want a colleague to stay informed of a conversation you’re having with someone.

However, using BCC is a risky move as it has many drawbacks, especially when it comes to email etiquette. Instead, using a tool like GMass is your best bet when you want to email a large group of different people separately.

What Is GMass?

GMass is powerful email outreach software that makes it incredibly simple to send bulk emails to multiple recipients from your Gmail inbox.

Its mass email features have made it a popular Chrome extension used by employees of large companies like Google, LinkedIn, Uber, and Twitter.

Individuals in charge of social societies such as clubs, schools, and churches, and anyone else can use GMass to send out mass emails to targeted audiences.

Essentially, if you send bulk email campaigns to multiple people, then GMass can help you.

And it’s a lot better than using email BCC!

How?
When you use GMass to send mass emails to multiple recipients, each sent email is delivered as an individual email. This way, your recipients won’t be able to see other recipients’ email addresses. (Learn more about this here.)

Why Using GMass Is Better Than Using the BCC Option

Here are three reasons why it’s better to use GMass over BCC emails:

1. Add Tons of Email Recipients in Seconds

Manually adding lots of people as recipients to your bulk email campaigns in a BCC or CC address list can be incredibly tiring. It’s also error-prone, as you may forget to add someone or mistakenly add the wrong ID to your email.

Fortunately, GMass gives you lots of convenient, error-free ways to include tons of recipients in seconds.

You can connect a Google Sheet of contacts… build a list through a Gmail search… use your Google Contacts… or even just paste all your recipients in the To field. (In every case, each person will only get one email, to them — they’ll have no idea you sent it to anyone else. It’s not a giveaway like BCC.)

2. Send Personalized Emails

A major issue with BCC’d emails is that they’re devoid of any personalization.

Your only option is to create a general email for all the recipients or send your BCC recipients an email that only addresses the primary recipient.

As you can’t address each BCC’d recipient personally, you’re sacrificing your chances of making a personal connection with them.

Some of them might even mark your email as spam!

Fortunately, GMass offers settings for the mail merge personalization of your emails.

You can add email personalization variables, such as:

  • {FirstName}
  • {LastName}
  • {Company}

GMass uses the recipient’s email address and other data to find the personalization values and automatically adds them to each email addressed to that recipient.

It also provides you other features such as:

Auto First Name Detection — the software accurately auto-detects someone’s first name from their email address. Using the {auto-first} personalization variable, you can automatically insert a recipient’s first name anywhere in your email.

Include personalized links — GMass will help you automatically include customized links or URLs in your emails.

For example, if you have to send unique files to each recipient in an email list, sending email attachments isn’t possible. But you can host these files in your server or a cloud drive like Dropbox or Google Drive and send customized links to those files through GMass.

Include personalized images — you can personalize an email by automatically including images unique to each recipient.


Customize entire paragraphs of text — you can also auto-personalize large blocks of text in your email message.

3. Easily Schedule Your Emails

You’ll naturally want your emails to reach the people’s inboxes at the right time.

And with GMass’ scheduling feature, this becomes a breeze.

You can craft your emails in advance and decide when to send them. When the time arrives, GMass will automatically send the emails for you. This way, you don’t have to be online when your emails go out.

You can also choose from a set of default times or enter a custom date and time to schedule your emails. If you need to reschedule your emails, you can find the related emails in your Drafts folder and edit them there.

Oh — and if you still want to BCC people on your emails with GMass, you can. You can even use mail merge to customize who gets BCCed on every single email. Here’s our guide to mail merge CC and BCC to show you how.

BCC Email: Final Thoughts

Using the BCC feature to send an email to multiple recipients is a thing of the past. It’s impractical, time-consuming, and risky.

Why settle for that when you have modern tools to do the job for you?

With innovative mail-merge programs like GMass, you can quickly draft, send, and manage mass emails in seconds.

Why not try GMass today and get the benefits of the BCC field and more with none of its drawbacks?

To join the other 300,000+ people using GMass right now (who’ve given it an average of 4.8/5 stars across more than 10k ratings), just download the Chrome extension. You’ll be up and running on a free trial in a matter of minutes with no credit card required.

Ready to send better emails and save a ton of time?


GMass is the only tool for marketing emails, cold emails, and mail merge — all inside Gmail. Tons of power but easy to learn and use.


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In early 2019, I signed up for a six-month “promoted product post” campaign with Product Hunt. GMass has been featured on the site organically several times in the past, and the Product Hunt community has always liked GMass, so I thought a paid promoted campaign could boost our user base and increase awareness. The deal was this: a six-month-long promotion, where GMass would be featured as the promoted product of the day once a week, every week, for those six months, totaling 24 total days of promotion.

The campaign ran from April 4 to September 12, 2019.

How much did the Product Hunt promotion cost?

Working with a Product Hunt advertising specialist, we agreed to the following terms:

  • GMass would be the promoted product for the full day 24 times, spaced out once a week over six months on Monday-Friday weekdays. No weekends.
  • The cost per promoted post was $2,800.
  • We were given this cost based on our six-month commitment. We were told the retail price of a single promoted post was in the $4,000-$6,000 range.
  • The total cost was $2800 x 24 = $67,200.

What did the Product Hunt promoted post look like?

When your product is the promoted post for the day, you show up in the fixed fourth position all day long. The “Promoted” designation appears next to the product so that Product Hunters clearly know that your product is there as a paid promotion. Clicking on the product takes you straight to our website, rather than to the Product Hunt page for our product, which is a significant difference from the organic product posts for the day. Clicking on “Comments,” however, does take the user to our PH product page.

Notice that relative to the products above and beneath, GMass has an extraordinarily high number of upvotes. This is because our product, even as a promoted post, continues to gather upvotes from the community, even though that doesn’t change the position of our promoted product in the daily listings. Promoted products are always fixed in the fourth position.

Product Hunt paid fourth position(Of the 24 times GMass was the promoted product, I never took a screenshot of the website, but here’s a screenshot of ANOTHER product being featured — notice how it’s in the fixed fourth position.)

You’ll often see that a promoted product has the most upvotes of any of that day’s products. That is because a promoted product has had multiple days of exposure on the Product Hunt homepage, first as an organically hunted product, and then as a promoted product post. So basically, any promoted post is being featured on the homepage for at least the second time, if not the third or fourth time, and therefore has collected at least two days, if not more, of upvotes.

Additionally, on the days that GMass was the promoted product, it was also featured as such in the PH daily email newsletter. It looked like this in the email newsletter:

Product Hunger blog paid position

(Note that it’s pretty far below the fold. I had to enable some special settings in my screen capture software just to get one giant capture of the newsletter from the top to where the promoted product is mentioned.)

How much traffic does the Product Hunt homepage get?

According to my advertising rep, the PH homepage averages about one million unique pageviews/month, which equates to about 30,000 pageviews/day. Additionally, the email newsletter is sent to 300,000-400,000 people daily.

What were the results?

To see the traffic generated by my website as a result of the promotion, I filtered by destination URL in Google Analytics. These results combined the traffic from both the PH website and the PH newsletter, since the destination URL was always the same.

You might think that the traffic can be separated by referrer, though, to gauge what traffic came from the website vs. the newsletter, since the newsletter would show up as direct traffic. However, many community-oriented sites, including PH, practice referrer masking, which prevents the web server from detecting the HTTP referrer on the request. They do this by inserting an interstitial page between the PH page and the target website, and this “middle man” page is responsible for redirecting the browser to the target website. It also eliminates the HTTP referrer on the page request.

That makes it impossible for an analytics tool to separate the Product Hunt homepage traffic from its newsletter traffic.

 

Product Hunt Google Analytics

The key takeaways from Google Analytics are:

  • The promotion generated a total of about 18,800 unique pageviews over the six months. Each day resulted in anywhere from 600 to 1,200 unique pageviews.
  • The highest numbers of unique pageviews per day came earlier in the six months, and the lowest numbers of unique pageviews came later.
  • The average time spent on our homepage, as a result of clicking the PH promotion, was 8.5 minutes, which is pretty good. Either that speaks to how engaging our homepage is, or how relevant the PH user base was to GMass, or perhaps both.

So what caused the steady decline in unique visitors throughout the six months? I’m not sure, but it could be that PH users experienced GMass fatigue, and were tired of seeing GMass on the homepage week after week. I suspect that many PH users are daily visitors, so it’s not like GMass was being exposed to a brand new set of people week after week. I postulate that most of the people who saw it every subsequent week had seen it previously. Another theory is that traffic to PH is slower in the summer months than the non-summer months. My promotion started in April and concluded toward the end of the summer.

PH did share some traffic stats with me about their homepage traffic. It seems that homepage views range between 20K and 35K pageviews per day. There was no consistent decline of PH homepage views going into the summer months, at least based on the data provided by PH to me.

It’s also worth noting that the overall clicks and unique visitors as a result of the promoted posts differed between my Google Analytics and PH’s internal system. The stats that my advertising manager shared with me always showed more clicks and more pageviews than my Google Analytics data showed. Despite some effort between us, we were never able to decipher the reason for this discrepancy.

What about the conversion rate?

While knowing how much sheer website traffic the promoted posts brought is interesting, it’s even more interesting to understand how many new users signed up as a result of the promotion. And more than that, the crucial data is how many PAID subscribers we gained as a result of the promoted posts.

Throughout the six months, a total of 498 user accounts were created by clicking through the promoted post link.

Of these 498 user accounts, 41 upgraded to a paid subscription. The average subscription price of a GMass account is $16/month, so doing 41 x $16/month yields $656/month recurring revenue gain from this promotion. Another way to look at it is we spent about $1,500 per new paid subscriber. The average lifespan of a paying GMass customer is about one year, so doing $16/month x 12 months = $192, which is far short of the $1,500 customer acquisition cost.

So was it worth it financially in terms of customer acquisition cost (CAC)? Probably not.

But was it worth it in terms of the exposure and increased brand recognition of GMass? Perhaps. I noticed that during the course of the six months, whenever another email automation product was hunted organically, in the Comments, someone would ask, “Well, how is this better than GMass?” That awareness — to compare anything new to GMass — might not have existed if not for the continuous weekly exposure GMass received.

Hunter comments about GMass

So would I do another paid promotion with Product Hunt? I’d consider it in the future after a new Product Hunt audience has cycled in, and if I can get better pricing from their advertising team.

See why 99% of users say they’ve had their best deliverability ever with GMass


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For small businesses, finding perfect new employees is key to keeping your operation afloat. And it’s a difficult enough task without becoming overwhelmed with an inbox full of applications. The good news is that keeping track of applications doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. 

In the recruiting world, there are software solutions designed for this purpose, but they may not be the best choice for your business. A formal applicant tracking system (ATS) might not fit in your small business budget, for example, as most ATS solutions will run you at least $100/month. And because most are designed for bigger businesses, they might not include the features you need.

Also, few of them are as customizable as a specialized small business needs. Even mighty Google, which launched its ATS, Hire, a year-and-a-half ago, found it difficult to provide employers with enough of what they needed. They threw in the towel and closed Hire in September 2019.

Fortunately, there’s a cost-effective solution already at your fingertips that lets you avoid all of this. Thanks to its unique features, you can use Gmail as an applicant tracking system without paying a monthly service fee. Using Gmail as your ATS can save you a lot of the time, money, and headaches that come with recruiting new employees. Here are five tips for setting up Gmail to work as an applicant tracking system.

Tip #1: Use a dedicated Gmail alias for applications

If your small business is super small, you probably use your email address for a lot of different purposes: to communicate with vendors, customers, subscribe to industry newsletters, and for online shopping. Adding a stream of incoming applicants to that mix can seem like a disaster in the making, but there’s a simple solution. Using a unique email alias makes it possible to funnel incoming applications and control the flow of those emails, so they don’t interfere with the rest of your business communications. 

Since Gmail offers unlimited email aliases, you can choose one alias for all incoming applications or a unique alias for each position. Here are some examples: 

  • For all applications: [email protected] (where email is your regular email address)
  • For specific positions: [email protected] (where email is your regular email address, and title is the job title, such as CSR or sales)

Once you decide which alias(es) will work best, you’ll use these new email addresses on job postings so that all applications are directed to the appropriate email address. But before you start posting, read further and learn how to control the flow of incoming applications.

Tip #2: Set up a filter to capture incoming applications

Whether you’re using a unique Gmail alias for your applications or have set up a dedicated Gmail account, you’ll want to set up a filter to capture those incoming messages and keep them organized. Filtering messages allows you to save time and energy by collecting applications so that they are waiting when you are ready to review them.

To do this, create a filter using the Gmail alias or email address you’ve chosen and consider selecting the following options:

  • Mark as read (to reduce unwanted notifications)
  • Archive (to keep your inbox uncluttered) 
  • Add label ‘Applications’ (so you can easily find all your new applications when it’s review time)

Once you’ve set up this initial filter, you’re ready to share your job posting and receive applications.

Tip #3: Use Gmail labels to organize applications after screening

Now that your incoming applications are neatly filtered and labeled, you’ll want to keep them organized as candidates move through your recruiting process. After all, many of the applications you review will not advance to the next stage, and others will drop off at different points in the process as you narrow down your candidate pool. 

Nested labels keep applications organized throughout the recruiting funnel. Set up nested labels under the Applications label to track the other stages of the recruiting process: Rejected, Phone screening, Interview, Offer, Hired. As you screen and interact with candidates, add the new label to their application email. This will allow you to access all applications easily at a given stage and locate applications quickly.

Tip #4: Use Gmail canned responses to create templates for email communication

Throughout the recruiting process, you probably repeat yourself a lot as you communicate the same messages to different candidates. Gmail’s canned responses can save you time and energy by working as templates to help you communicate at different stages of recruiting. For instance, you might create a canned response to inform a candidate when their application is rejected after the initial screening. Canned responses can also be useful for creating form emails to follow-up after a phone screening, to invite candidates to an in-person interview, and even for job offer emails.

Tip #5: Use GMass to send personalized messages

Once you’ve selected your new employee, you may want to communicate with applicants in bulk. It’s a recruiting best practice to inform applicants when they are not chosen for a position, and GMass can help you create personalized messages for this purpose. By drilling down to a particular sublabel (Rejected, in this case), you can use GMass to build an email list and use a prepared template with name tags to notify applicants who didn’t make the cut. Instead of receiving an anonymous email, they receive a personalized message addressed to their name. If you’d like applicants to reapply for future openings (which perhaps you identified with a separate sublabel), you can add information about keeping in touch via social media channels. 

From sent to hired

Using Gmail as an ATS for small business owners is a cost-effect and time-saving approach to managing incoming applications and keeping your entire recruiting funnel organized. When you need to hire new employees, you want to focus your energy on evaluating their skills and potential, not on fumbling through your inbox to look for their application materials. With a few simple steps, you can easily transform Gmail into an application tracking system that can work within your regular email inbox and help you find the best candidates even faster.

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Want to know how to use the CC and BCC features in Gmail?

Gmail’s CC and BCC features can help you send emails to multiple recipients.
However, the approach that each one uses is slightly different.

Don’t worry.

In this article, I’ll show you how to use each of those Gmail features correctly.

However, the CC and BCC features also have several limitations. That’s why I’ll also demonstrate how to use mail merge tools to make the process far easier!

Also check out how to use BCC email including a better way to send emails to multiple recipients in my guide to using BCC.

This Article Contains:

(use the links below to jump to a particular section)

Let’s go.

How to Use CC in Gmail?

The CC (carbon copy) field allows you to send a copy of your email to multiple recipients.

The term “carbon copying” comes from the carbon paper you use to make copies of documents — the email service makes copies of your email and sends it to CC’d recipients.

A. How Is “CC” Different from “To” in Gmail?

The difference between the CC and To field lies in email etiquette.

The To field is used for primary recipients — people required to act in response to your mail.
On the other hand, the CC feature applies to secondary recipients — people who need to be in the loop about the conversation and, ideally, aren’t supposed to take any action.

The correct usage of To and CC fields usually defines who needs to take action and who simply needs the information.

B. How to CC in Gmail

Here’s a step-by-step guide on using the CC field to send mail to multiple recipient lists in Gmail.
I’ll explain the steps when using:

1. How To CC Using Web Browser

Step 1
Log in to your Gmail account and click the Compose button to open up the Gmail compose window.

click-compose-icon

Step 2
In the To address box, type your primary recipient’s email address. You can separate multiple addresses using a comma, space or by pressing the enter key.

To send a copy of your mail to secondary recipients, you must add each one as a CC recipient.

Click the CC button, as shown below.

click-on-cc

Step 3
Enter the email address of recipients who’ll receive a copy of the email in the CC field.

enter-email

Step 4
Compose your new message and hit Send when your message is complete.
All your recipients (primary + CC’d) will receive the email.

Let’s see how it looks at a recipient’s end.

recipient-side

All recipient addresses in the To and CC fields are visible to everyone in the email.

2. How To CC In Android and iOS (iPhone)

Note: While I’ve used Android screenshots, the process highlighted here is the same for both Android and iOS devices.

Step 1
Open the Gmail app on your Android or iOS device and click on Compose to write your new message.

click-on-compose

Step 2
In the To field of the new email, type your primary recipient’s email address. You can separate multiple addresses using a comma or space.

To add a CC recipient, click on the downward arrow on the top right corner in the To address box, as shown below. This will display the CC and BCC fields.

click-on-downward

cc-bcc-display

Step 3
In the CC field, enter the mail addresses of the recipients who’ll receive a copy of the email.

enter-cc-email

Step 4
Compose your message and hit Send. Both your primary recipient and the CC’d person will receive the email.

click-send-icon

Go back to Contents

Let’s now look at some issues of using Gmail’s CC method.

C. 3 Major Problems with Gmail’s Carbon Copy Method

Some of the problems linked with CC’ing recipients in Gmail are:

1. Displays Mailing List to All Recipients

The recipients in Gmail’s CC list are not hidden from each other. This is fine when you’re sending an email to a group of people who know each other.

However, when you email a group where people don’t know the other parties, using the CC feature is a breach of privacy.

Think about it:
If you’re sending marketing or sales emails, would you think of giving away your mailing list?

Because that’s what you’re doing by using the To/CC field in Gmail!

To protect the identity of your recipients, never use the CC field to communicate confidential information.

2. Impractical for Mass Mailing

Do you need to email dozens or even hundreds of recipients at a time?

Manually adding each recipient to the CC line would be a painstaking and error-prone process. You could misspell an email address, leave someone out, or mistakenly add someone as To. The list goes on.

3. Unintentional Reply All

A significant problem with using the CC line in Gmail is that any CC’d person could mistakenly click “Reply All” instead of the “Reply” button while responding to your mail.

An unintentional “Reply All” broadcasts their response to every address involved in the communication (including the CC list), resulting in a potentially embarrassing situation.

Go back to Contents

Now that we’ve covered how to CC in Gmail, let’s explore how to BCC in Gmail since it can solve the first limitation to an extent.

How Do You BCC in Gmail?

The BCC (blind carbon copy) field allows you to send an email to a multiple recipient list.

Each address in the BCC field is known as a tertiary recipient.

When using the BCC option, the main recipient of the mail will be unaware of other recipients you’ve included. As a result, a BCC email is a little more confidential than CC.

While your BCC recipient can’t see who else has been added, they’ll know that they were added to the BCC line and weren’t the only ones being addressed.

A. How to Use Blind Carbon Copy in Gmail

Here’s a step-by-step guide on using the BCC line for sending an email to undisclosed recipients in the Gmail email client. (The process is the same for your mobile Gmail app.)

Use the same first steps as in How to CC in Gmail.

Except, this time, click on add BCC instead of CC.

click-on-bcc

Enter the tertiary recipient you’d like hidden in the BCC address field.

Then, compose the message and send it.

enter-bcc-email

On the recipient side, it will look something like this:

primary-recipient

bcc-recipient

The main recipient of your email can’t see who else has been added. However, each BCC recipient will know that they’ve been BCC’d to this mail.

For more information on using BCC in Gmail, read my ultimate guide. 

Go back to Contents

Let’s now look at some potential issues of using BCC in Gmail.

B. 3 Major Problems with Gmail’s BCC Method

The three major problems with using the BCC field in Gmail include:

1. Unprofessional

Because your recipients in the BCC address field know instinctively they aren’t the only ones added to this mail, it could raise questions or suspicion. That’s why you should never use the BCC feature for formal conversations, as it could lead to distrust among your team members.

2. No Personalization

Gmail’s BCC or CC feature doesn’t allow you to personalize emails.

This means that your recipients receive an email without their name being mentioned. This is enough for many people to mark your email as spam or just delete it.

Moreover, this makes it an impractical method to send pitches and marketing emails.

Why?
As you can’t mention a person’s name and customize their sales message, your BCC list recipient will receive a bland, generic marketing email that disappoints them. You won’t be able to address their concerns and make a personal connection to boost your conversions.

3. No Stats or Analytics from Your Emails

Gmail doesn’t give you any stats or analytics from your BCC or CC emails.

While this might not be an issue for personal communication, it’s a significant problem if you want to track how many people opened or clicked on your sales message.

However, Gmail doesn’t give the sender any features to analyze data — such as when the email was opened or what links were clicked, etc.

These statistics indicate how well your emails are being received, so can you really operate efficiently without them?

Moreover, these stats are helpful not only for email marketers and salespeople but also for anyone who regularly sends mass emails to a group.

Go back to Contents

Fortunately, you can easily overcome the problems associated with Gmail’s CC and BCC features by using an email marketing tool like GMass.

How to Send Mass Emails with GMass (and Avoid CC and BCC problems)

GMass is a powerful email marketing software that allows users to run email campaigns from their Gmail inbox. Its powerful mail merge features have made it a popular Chrome extension for employees from top companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn.

Individuals, schools, social clubs, and churches can also use GMass to send emails from their Google account to a target audience.

gmass

It’s super easy to send emails to multiple recipients in Gmail using the GMass extension.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Enter email addresses in the “To” field.
  2. Compose your email subject and message.
  3. Click the “GMass” button (instead of Gmail’s Send button).

gmass-icon

You’re done! Now you can send emails to multiple recipients within seconds!

Did you notice the {FirstName} field in the screenshot?
This personalization feature allows you to address each recipient in your distribution list by their own name. You will never need to say a generic “Hi” again in your bulk emails.

And instead of manually adding each recipient from your distribution list, you can use one of these three easy ways:

  1. Use Google Contacts
  2. Export your Contacts to a Google Sheet
  3. Export Contacts from a Gmail Label

And with GMass, if you want to use CC and BCC, you can — and you can personalize them for every recipient. Check out our guide to mail merge CC and BCC to see how you can include different CC and/or BCC addresses for everyone on your email list.

Benefits of Using GMass

Here are the top seven reasons to use GMass to send your emails:

  • Automatically personalize your bulk emails to multiple people, including the subject line, message body, images, and much more. This way, you can quickly craft emails personalized to each recipient at scale.
  • Create sequences to send an automated direct response as follow-up emails. You can customize all aspects of your follow-up emails, such as the time between them or the number of follow-ups.
  • Analyze your email performance with detailed email analytics reports right inside your Gmail inbox. You can analyze open rate, response rate, bounce rate, etc.
  • Email scheduling helps you schedule the right time to send automatic emails so that each recipient gets them when they’re most likely to check their inboxes.
  • Set up behavior-based email campaigns.
  • Save any email you send to group members as a template to reuse for your future emails.
  • Make use of GMass’ powerful capabilities on your smartphone with the GMass add-on for the Gmail app on Android devices.

To enjoy such unique advantages of GMass, just download the Chrome extension and sign up using your Gmail account.

Go back to Contents

Final Thoughts

Mailing to multiple recipients doesn’t have to be a tiring and complicated process.

While Gmail’s CC or BCC field can help, using a mail merge app like GMass is a far better solution. It has tons of features to get the best out of your email campaigns and maximize your conversions for all future emails.

Why not download the GMass Chrome web extension right now and experience it for yourself?

Ready to transform Gmail into an email marketing/cold email/mail merge tool?


Only GMass packs every email app into one tool — and brings it all into Gmail for you. Better emails. Tons of power. Easy to use.


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The Four Horsemen of Linux Mail Transfer: Exim, Postfix, Sendmail, and Qmail

Considering how important and popular email is today, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are millions of email servers currently operating on the public internet. According to a 2019 survey from securityspace.com (http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.201907/mxsurvey.html), there are approximately 1.8 million email servers online!

Given the long history of email (dating back to 1971), and the massive number of email servers online, you’d be right to assume that there are many different email server platforms available. However, according to the securityspace.com survey, three types of email servers account for more than 95% of the global market share:

    1. Exim
    2. Postfix
    3. Sendmail

The top three email servers on the internet are Exim (with over 55%), Postfix (over 30%), and Sendmail (about 4%). All three of these email platforms, and Qmail, were originally developed for Unix-Like or Linux based Operating Systems.

Today, with the widespread availability of easy and low-cost cloud-hosted server providers, anyone can setup their own email server. This guide focuses on deploying, configuring, and discussing best practices and security concerns for Exim, Postfix, Sendmail, and Qmail.

 

Exim – Overview + Pros & Cons

Exim is an MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) for Unix-like operating systems first written in 1995 by Philip Hazel. Exim is licensed under the GPLv2 license. Exim is used extensively all around the world. According to the study noted earlier  (http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.201907/mxsurvey.html), as of 2019 Exim accounted for approximately 57% of all online public email servers on the internet. Exim4 is currently the default MTA on all Debian-based GNU/Linux systems, including Ubuntu.

Exim – Pros

  • Default MTA on Debian-based Linux distributions
  • Easy install, basic install is guided via user interface
  • Popular and well documented
  • Plenty of community support
  • Secure

Exim – Cons

  • Arguably more difficult to maintain/administer post-deployment than Postfix

 

Postfix – Overview + Pros & Cons

Postfix is an MTA (mail transfer agent) for Unix-like operating systems developed by Wietse Venema in partnership with IBM in 1997. Postfix is licensed under the IBM Public License. As of 2019, Postfix is still under active development by its creator and a team of contributors. According to the following study (http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.201907/mxsurvey.html),as of 2019 Postfix accounted for approximately 34% of all online public email servers on the internet.

Postfix – Pros

  • Easy to configure and use
  • Elegant (author’s opinion)
  • Popular and well documented
  • Plenty of community support
  • Secure

Postfix – Cons

  • No Windows port

 

Sendmail – Overview + Pros & Cons

Sendmail is an MTA (mail transfer agent) for Unix-like operating systems first released in 1983. Sendmail is a descendant of the original ARPANET delivermail program written by Eric Allman. Allman developed Sendmail as a replacement for delivermail for BSD systems, starting with BSD version 4.1c in 1983. Sendmail is licensed under the Sendmail license. At one point (1996), Sendmail accounted for approximately 80% of all public email servers available on the internet. According to the Security Space study (http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.201907/mxsurvey.html), in 2019 Sendmail accounted for approximately 4% of all online public email servers on the internet. Sendmail was acquired by Proofpoint in 2013.

Sendmail – Pros

  • Native Windows port available

Sendmail – Cons

  • Not as easy to configure as Exim or Postfix
  • Not as efficient with resources

 

Qmail – Overview + Pros & Cons

Qmail is an MTA (mail transfer agent) for Unix-like operating systems first developed in 1995 by Daniel J. Bernstein. At its release, Qmail was touted as a more secure replacement for Sendmail. Qmail’s source code was released to the public domain by its author. According to the Security Space study (http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.201907/mxsurvey.html), in 2019 Qmail accounted for approximately 0.07% of all online public email servers on the internet.

Qmail – Pros

  • Secure
  • Low resource requirements

Qmail – Cons

  • Unmaintained
  • Most complicated of the four to install
  • Config file structure and general operation is less elegant than Postfix or Exim
  • Not as popular as the others (less than 1% market share)
  • No Windows port

 

Installation and Configuration Procedure – Environment Setup Notes

Unless otherwise specified, the following environment is used for all installation and configuration procedures to follow:

  • Ubuntu Server 18.04.3 LTS
    • Kernel Version: 4.15.0-1045-aws
  • Running on an entry-level Amazon Lightsail instance (at the time of this writing, $3.50/mo)
    • 512 MB RAM
    • 1 vCPU
    • 20GB SSD
    • 1 TB Bandwidth

These procedures assume you are starting with a fresh installation of Ubuntu.

As always, don’t forget to start by fully updating Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Also, we will need to allow TCP port 25 (the default SMTP port) through the firewall. In our Amazon Lightsail environment, that looks like this:

lightsail1

 

How to Use Mutt Email Client to Send a Test Email

Mutt is a lightweight, CLI-only email client. It is very useful for testing and as a lightweight general purpose email client.

To install Mutt:

sudo apt-get install mutt

mutt1

We’re not going to go into a full configuration of Mutt. To manually launch Mutt and tell it to use our Maildir, run this:

mutt -f ~/Maildir

Mutt will ask you if you want to create /home/ubuntu/Mail (we don’t) so just press n

Once Mutt starts, it will look like this:

mutt2

To send a test email with Mutt, do the following:

  1. To start the mail, press m
  2. Enter the email address to which you want to send a test email
  3. Enter the subject of the test email
  4. You will then enter Nano text editor to write the body of your message. Write whatever you want.
  5. When finished writing your test message, press ctrl + x
  6. Then press y
  7. Then press enter

If it has been done correctly, you should see something like this:

mutt3

Finally, press y to send the email, and you should see “mail sent.”

Now, let’s go check our email to see if the message was delivered. Since this is a brand new email server with no DNS configuration or SPF, DKIM or DMARC, our test message will most likely be flagged as spam (if it gets delivered at all). For our tests, we used a Gmail account, and we were able to find our message in the spam folder:

mutt4

Our email was delivered! This means our email server is correctly sending outbound mail.

 

Basic Install & Config Procedure for Exim

Exim – Intro & Unique Considerations

Exim version 4 is the default MTA for Debian-based Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 18. Therefore, installing Exim4 on Ubuntu is very straightforward.

Exim – Common config files

/etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf – This is the config file where all settings configured via the configuration user interface are stored. You can either edit this file directly, or re-run sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated – This is the master configuration file that is generated automatically every time you run sudo update-exim4.conf

This file should NOT be edited manually.

Exim – Useful commands

To start the Exim4 daemon:

sudo systemctl start exim4.service

To stop the Exim4 daemon:

sudo systemctl stop exim4.service

To restart the Exim4 daemon:

sudo systemctl restart exim4.service

To generate main Exim4 config files:

sudo update-exim4.conf

Run the configuration user interface for Exim4:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

Exim – Procedure

First, see what Exim4 package is available in the default repositories:

sudo apt-cache policy exim4

(At the time of this writing, Exim version 4.90-1 is available in the default repositories.)

exim1

To install Exim4, run the following:

sudo apt-get install exim4

exim2

To configure Exim4, run the following, which will display a user interface for configuring many Exim parameters:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

You should see the following screen, allowing you to choose the type of mail server configuration you want. For this example, we will be configuring Exim as an “internet site” or an email server that sends and receives email directly over the internet via SMTP.

exim3

The next screen will prompt you to enter the “mail name” of the server. This should be the domain name where you want to receive email. We will use the name “sjno.net.”

exim4

The next screen asks us to define on which IP addresses we want to listen for incoming SMTP connections. Since we want this server to be publicly available to the internet, we will set this to blank.

exim5

The next screen asks us to define our “local domains.” Local domains are domains for which this email server should be considered the final destination. We will use the domain “sjno.net.”

exim6

The next screen asks us to define our “relay domains.” Relay domains are non-local domains. In our case, this is everything other than “sjno.net.”For now, we will leave this as the default value (blank).

exim7

The next screen asks us to define IP addresses for which this system will unconditionally relay email messages. This is useful if we are setting up this email server to be a dedicated “Mail Relay” or “Smarthost.” For now, we will leave this as the default value (blank).

exim8

The next screen configures DNS lookup settings. For now, we will leave this as the default value (No).

exim9

The next screen asks us our preference between two common local mail formats. These two formats are called “mbox” and “maildir.” This choice is mostly user preference. We prefer Maildir, so that is what we will select here.

exim10

The next screen asks us whether or not we want to split Exim4’s configuration into smaller files, as opposed to the default “monolithic” configuration. There are pros and cons to each. For this example, we are going to choose not to split the config files (No).

exim11

The next screen asks us where mail addressed to postmaster@ and root@ should be delivered. If we leave this blank, mail for those recipients will be saved in /var/mail/mail (not recommended). We will enter the username of our default user, which is “ubuntu.”

exim12

Exim – Testing Initial Installation

We now have a basic installation of Exim! Let’s make sure it started and is running OK.

Run this:

ps aux | grep exim4

If Exim is running, the above command should output something similar to this (we can see that there is a running process /usr/sbin/exim4):

exim13

Next, run this:

sudo service exim4 status

If Exim was started successfully, the command above should output something similar to this (we can see that the active status shows “active (running)” ):

exim14

Next, run this:

netstat -aln | grep 25

We should see that our server is listening on port 25:

exim15

Also, we should now be able to use a free web-based tool to verify that our server is up and listening to the world. We like to use the “Test Email Server” tool from mxtoolbox.com’s SuperTool (https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx#).

If we point the “Test Email Server” test to the public IP address of our Amazon Lightsail instance, we should see something like this:

exim16

To send a test email using the Mutt email client, refer to the section: How to Use Mutt Email Client to Send a Test Email

These tests prove that our basic Exim email server is up, listening, and can send mail. You may be thinking “but that’s just an IP Address! What about DNS?” Continue on to the DNS Setup for Mail Server section for steps on configuring the basic DNS-related settings.

Exim – Troubleshooting

Server doesn’t appear to be listening or responding from the outside?

Don’t forget to open port 25 on your firewall. (See instructions for AWS in the environment notes section.)

 

Basic Install & Config Procedure for Postfix

Postfix – Intro / Unique Considerations

Postfix is available in the default Ubuntu repositories, therefore installing Postfix is rather straightforward.

Postfix – Common config files

/etc/aliases

/etc/postfix/main.cf

/etc/postfix/master.cf

Postfix – Useful commands

To start Postfix:

sudo postfix start

To stop Postfix:

sudo postfix stop

To restart Postfix:

sudo postfix restart

After modifying main.cf, be sure to run:

service postfix reload

To modify Postfix config programmatically:

sudo postconf

To see how to use Postconf:

man postconf

Postfix – Procedure

First, let’s see what Postfix package is available in the default repositories:

sudo apt-cache policy postfix

(At the time of this writing, Postfix version 3.3.0 is available in the default repositories.)

postfix1

To install Postfix, run the following:

sudo apt-get install postfix

postfix2

You should immediately be greeted by Postfix’s configuration user interface.

You should see the following screen, allowing you to choose the type of mail server configuration you want. For this example, we will be configuring Postfix as an “internet site” or an email server that sends and receives email directly over the internet via SMTP.

postfix3

The next screen will prompt you to enter the “mail name” of the server. This should be the domain name where you want to receive email. We will use the name “sjno.net.”

postfix4

Immediately after hitting enter on this screen, the Postfix configuration user interface will close and Postfix will start scrolling through some automated configuration and startup output. Be sure to read this output for useful tips on performing additional Postfix configuration.

By default, Postfix uses Mbox mail format. We prefer Maildir. First, let’s manually create the Maildir directory structure for our Ubuntu user:

mkdir -p /home/ubuntu/Maildir/{cur,new,tmp}

Then configure Postfix to use Maildir:

sudo postconf -e mailbox_command=

sudo postconf -e home_mailbox=Maildir/

Then, tell Postfix to reload its config:

sudo postfix reload

Postfix – Testing Initial Installation

We now have a basic installation of Postfix! Let’s make sure it started and is running OK.

ps aux | grep postfix

If Postfix is running, the above command should output something similar to this (we can see that there are several Postfix processes running):

postfix5

sudo service postfix status

If Postfix started successfully, the command above should output something similar to this (we can see that the active status shows “active (exited)”):

postfix6

netstat -aln | grep 25

You should see that your server is listening on port 25:

postfix7

Also, Postfix has its own status command:

sudo postfix status

postfix8

We should now also be able to use a free web-based tool to verify that our server is up and listening to the world. We like to use the “Test Email Server” tool from mxtoolbox.com’s SuperTool (https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx#).

If we point the “Test Email Server” tool to the public IP address of our Amazon Lightsail instance, we should see something like this:

postfix9

To send a test email using the Mutt email client, refer to the section How to Use Mutt Email Client to Send a Test Email

These tests prove that our basic Postfix email server is up, listening, and can send mail! You may be thinking “but that’s just an IP Address. What about DNS?” Continue on to the DNS Setup for Mail Server section for steps on configuring the basic DNS-related settings.

Postfix – Troubleshooting

Server doesn’t appear to be listening or responding from the outside?

Don’t forget to open port 25 on your firewall. (See instructions for AWS in the environment notes section.)

 

Basic Install & Config Procedure for Sendmail

Sendmail – Intro / Unique Considerations

Sendmail is available in the default Ubuntu repositories, therefore installing Sendmail is fairly straightforward, though not as simple as Exim or Postfix.

Sendmail – Common config files

/etc/aliases

/etc/hosts

/etc/mail/sendmail.mc

Sendmail – Useful commands

To start Sendmail:

sudo service sendmail start

To stop Sendmail:

sudo service sendmail stop

To restart Sendmail:

sudo service sendmail restart

To run the Sendmail setup user interface:

sudo sendmailconfig

Run this command whenever you update the /etc/aliases file:

sudo newaliases

Sendmail – Procedure

First, let’s see what Sendmail package is available in the default repositories:

sudo apt-cache policy sendmail

(At the time of this writing, Sendmail version 8.15.2 is available in the default repositories.)

sendmail1

To install Sendmail, run the following:

sudo apt-get install sendmail

sendmail2

After install completes, we need to make a modification to our /etc/hosts file.

sudo vim /etc/hosts

We need to modify the first line that starts with “127.0.0.1 localhost” to include the FQDN (fully qualified domain name) or our mail server. For our example, we will use “mail.sjno.net”:

sendmail3

Save the /etc/hosts file, then run the following command and answer “Y” to every prompt:

sudo sendmailconfig

When it’s finished, you should see something like this (note: the first part of the output is omitted):

sendmail4

By default, Sendmail only listens on the local loopback interface (127.0.0.1). To tell Sendmail to listen on all interfaces, we need to modify etc/mail/sendmail.mc:

sudo vim /etc/mail/sendmail.mc

Find the line that looks like “DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Family=inet, Name=MTA-v4, Port=smtp, Addr=127.0.0.1′)dnl” and comment it out by adding “dnl #” to the start of the line.

Create a new line directly below that looks like “DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Family=inet, Name=MTA-v4, Port=smtp’)dnl”

Refer to the screenshot:

sendmail5

Then, restart Sendmail:

sudo service sendmail restart

Sendmail – Testing Initial Installation

We now have a basic installation of Sendmail! Let’s make sure it started and is running OK.

ps aux | grep sendmail

If Sendmail is running, the command above should output something similar to this (we can see that there is a running process “sendmail: MTA: accepting connections”):

sendmail6

sudo service sendmail status

If Sendmail was started successfully, the command above should output something similar to this (we can see that the active status shows “active (running)”):

sendmail7

netstat -aln | grep 25

We should see that our server is listening on port 25:

sendmail8

Also, we should now be able to use a free web-based tool to verify that our server is up and listening to the world. We like to use the “Test Email Server” tool from mxtoolbox.com’s SuperTool (https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx#).

If we point the “Test Email Server” tool to the public IP address of our Amazon Lightsail instance, we should see something like this:

sendmail9

To send a test email using the Mutt email client, refer to the section How to Use Mutt Email Client to Send a Test Email

These tests prove that our basic Exim email server is up, listening, and can send mail! You may be thinking “but that’s just an IP Address. What about DNS?” Continue on to the DNS Setup for Mail Server section for steps on configuring the basic DNS-related settings.

Sendmail – Troubleshooting

Server doesn’t appear to be listening or responding from the outside?

Don’t forget to open port 25 on your firewall. (See instructions for AWS in the environment notes section.)

 

Basic Install & Config Procedure for Qmail

Qmail – Intro / Unique Considerations

Qmail is definitely the most complicated and at least intuitive of the four to configure on Ubuntu. Pay attention to the bit regarding daemontools-run below.

Qmail – Common config files

Many files in /etc/qmail

Many files in /var/ib/qmail

Qmail – Useful commands

To start Qmail:

sudo qmailctl restart

To stop Qmail

sudo qmailctl stop

To restart Qmail:

sudo qmailctl restart

To check Qmail status:

sudo qmailctl stat

Qmail – Procedure

First, let’s see what Qmail package is available in the default repositories:

sudo apt-cache policy qmail

(At the time of this writing, Qmail version 1.06 is available in the default repositories.)

qmail1

At the time of this writing, installing the default Qmail package on Ubuntu 18.04 does not automatically install at least one necessary dependency to make Qmail work. Let’s manually install that package:

sudo apt-get install daemontools-run

qmail2

To install Qmail, run the following:

sudo apt-get install qmail

qmail3

Let’s create a Maildir directory for our user:

mkdir -p /home/ubuntu/Maildir/{cur,new,tmp}

Then, copy and paste the following to do some basic Qmail setup. Be sure to replace all instances of “sjno.net” below with your domain.

sudo sh -c "echo 'sjno.net' > /etc/qmail/defaultdomain

echo 'sjno.net' > /etc/qmail/locals

echo 'mail.sjno.net' > /etc/qmail/me

echo 'sjno.net' > /etc/qmail/rcpthosts

echo './Maildir/' > /etc/qmail/defaultdelivery"

Qmail – Testing Initial Installation

Restart Qmail:

sudo qmailctl restart

If Qmail is working properly, you should see output similar to this:

qmail4

Check Qmail status:

sudo qmailctl stat

If Qmail started properly, you should see output similar to this:

qmail5

ps aux | grep qmail

If Qmail is running as expected, you will see output similar to this:

qmail6

netstat -aln | grep 25

This output shows that Qmail is listening on port 25.

qmail7

Also, we should now be able to use a free web-based tool to verify that our server is up and listening to the world. We like to use the “Test Email Server” tool from mxtoolbox.com’s SuperTool (https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx#).

If we point the “Test Email Server” tool to the public IP address of our Amazon Lightsail instance, we should see something like this:

qmail8

To send a test email using the Mutt email client, refer to the section How to Use Mutt Email Client to Send a Test Email

These tests prove that our basic Qmail email server is up, listening, and can send mail! You may be thinking “but that’s just an IP Address. What about DNS?” Continue on to the DNS Setup for Mail Server section for steps on configuring the basic DNS-related settings.

Qmail – Troubleshooting

If you see errors like this, make sure you have the “daemontools-run” package installed:

unable to open supervise/ok: file does not exist

Server doesn’t appear to be listening or responding from the outside?

Don’t forget to open port 25 on your firewall. (See instructions for AWS in the environment notes section.)

 

DNS Setup for Mail Server

Testing our email server by sending outbound emails and running tools against our public IP address is great, but what about DNS?

In order to tell the world how to get to your email server, we need to do some DNS setup. We will also setup SPF at the same time.

Requirements to complete this section:

  1. You must own a domain name. In this example, we will use the domain sjno.net.
  2. You must have the domain name configured with DNS servers. This is configured at your registrar (for example, godaddy.com).
  3. You must have access to make changes / add records on your DNS servers for your domain.

Assuming the three requirements above are met, we can create the necessary DNS records. There are many DNS providers available and all of their user interfaces will look different. Or, you could even be running your own CLI-only Linux DNS server with Bind9. Ignoring the differences between user interfaces, the concepts are the same. This example will show the DNS configuration with free DNS provider freedns.afraid.org.

First, let’s create an A Record for our new mail server. An A Record is the most basic type of DNS record. We are just creating a name for our mail server, and pointing it to the public IP address of our server. We’re going to call our server “mail.sjno.net”:

dns1

After saving our A Record and waiting a few minutes, we should be able to ping our mail server by name and see that the DNS is automatically resolving the IP address for us:

dns2

Next, we’re going to create an MX Record. An MX Record tells the world where to send email destined for our domain. We’re going to leave the “subdomain” blank (or @), and point it to the name of the A Record we created in the previous step:

dns3

After saving our MX Record and waiting a few minutes, we should be able to use our trusty online tool (https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx) to do an “MX Lookup” for our domain:

dns4

Next, we’re going to configure an SPF Record to tell the world that our email server is an allowed and trusted sender for our domain. Even though this is an SPF Record, we’re not going to use the SPF Record type, we’re actually going to use a TXT Record to record our SPF info. There are a few different ways to configure SPF, but we’re going to do it like this:

dns5

This is a shorthand way to say “trust the email server we have defined in the MX Record for this domain.” The destination or “content” of your SPF TXT record must be wrapped in quotes. Some user interfaces will automatically add the quotes for you, and others won’t, so watch out for that.

Once again, using our trusty tool (https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx) and this time performing an “SPF Record Lookup,” we should see that our SPF Record has been published successfully for our domain:

dns6

What is SMTP?

SMTP or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a communication protocol first defined in 1982. SMTP is the main protocol behind what we know as email. SMTP defines how email should be submitted to an email server from an email client, and also how email is sent and received between email servers. SMTP is an application layer protocol which requires that a TCP connection first be established to the email server before SMTP data can be sent across the connection.

Why is SMTP important? How is it used?

SMTP is important because it is the main internet standard behind email. The first email message was sent in 1971. Nearly 50 years later, email has become the single most important communication tool driving the modern world. Global communications today rely on email more than any other method of communication. The impact that email has had on global business is immeasurable.

 

Glossary of SMTP and Email Terminology

DKIM

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is an authentication method used to deter spam and phishing emails. DKIM utilizes cryptographic signatures to prove that an email was sent from a trusted email server and has not been tampered with. DKIM relies on DNS to publish DKIM information for a given email domain, usually via DNS TXT Record.

DMARC

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is an authentication method used to deter spam and phishing emails. DMARC complements SPF and DKIM by giving a recipient email server instructions on how to handle emails that do not pass SPF or DKIM for a given domain. DMARC relies on DNS to publish DMARC information for a given email domain, usually via DNS TXT Record.

DNS

DNS (Domain Name System) is arguably the most important protocol on the internet. To use a simple analogy, DNS is like the “phone book” of the internet. The DNS system allows computers to determine the IP Address for a given domain name.

IMAP

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is a protocol used by email clients to retrieve or download email messages from an email server to an email client. In most cases, IMAP is recommended as a better and more full-featured alternative to POP3.

Mail Relay

Mail Relay is both the service of routing email to another mail server for delivery, and a term for a mail server that provides that service.

MTA

An MTA (message transfer agent) is one component of an overall MHS (message handling system) or email server, that is responsible for transferring and routing email messages to the recipient’s email server.

Mutt

Mutt is a CLI (command line interface) email client that is useful on CLI-only Linux email servers for sending and receiving emails and also for troubleshooting email functionality.

MX Record

An MX record is a specific type of DNS record that defines the email server where emails should be sent for a given domain. For example, if you want to send an email to [email protected], your email client must first determine the email server used by the gmass.co domain. To make that determination, a DNS query will be made for the MX record for the gmass.co domain. Using a web-based MX lookup tool, we can see this information for ourselves. Refer to the screenshot (mx_lookup_1.png or mx_lookup_2.png). (I used MXToolbox.com and dnschecker.org to generate these screenshots.)

POP3

POP3 (Post Office Protocol) is a protocol used by email clients to retrieve or download email messages from an email server to an email client. POP3 is a very basic protocol. In most cases, IMAP is recommended as a better and more full-featured alternative to POP3.

SASL

SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) is a standardized method for adding authentication support to connection-based protocols. SASL decouples authentication from the application, allowing secure authentication to numerous compatible application layer protocols (including SMTP).

SPF

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a basic email authentication protocol that is used to deter spam and spoofed email on the internet. SPF utilizes DNS (typically via a DNS TXT Record) to publish trusted email servers for a given domain.

SPF Record

An SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record is a specific type of DNS record that is used to publish trusted email sending servers for a given email domain. SPF records have mostly been deprecated in favor of DNS TXT Records, which can contain the same information and serve the same purpose.

STARTTLS

STARTTLS is a protocol command that is issued by an email client to tell an email server that the client wants to upgrade the current connection to a secure connection utilizing SSL/TLS certificates.

TXT Record

A TXT (or text) Record is a specific type of DNS record used to publish arbitrary text related to a given domain. TXT Records are often used to prove domain ownership. TXT Records are also used to publish SPF, DKIM, and DMARC information related to email service for a domain.

 

If you’re a web developer and found this post useful, you might also like my technical review of popular SMTP services. 

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