How to Use Gmail for Email Marketing

If you're in search of a new ESP, Gmail might not be your first thought. The platform is meant primarily for individual email accounts, not marketing purposes. But since it's completely free, Gmail is hugely helpful for small businesses that are ready to expand their email marketing. As of 2023, Gmail has added numerous features that make it more suitable for email marketing, like multi-send mode as well as pre-set layouts, so it's more capable of email marketing than ever before.

#1. Choose Gmail marketing tools

There are many free Gmail marketing tools that can help you run email marketing campaigns out of Gmail, such as free Chrome extensions that let you schedule and send mailing campaigns to your subscribers without leaving Gmail. Google Sheets is another helpful, free tool — essentially Google's version of Microsoft Excel, and a fantastic tool for creating and managing your mailing lists so you can do a mail merge when you're ready to send a newsletter.

#2. Creating your email list

There are many ways you can create an email list for Gmail campaigns. We recommend using either Google Contacts or Google Sheets. Google Contacts is easy to access while you're in Gmail — select the addresses you want to include and add them to a new or existing label, then send a Gmail message to each person with that label. The downside is that you'd generally need to add each contact manually. If you have an existing list from a CRM or another spreadsheet program, it's easier to convert that list to a Google Sheets document than to add each contact to Google Contacts individually.

If you already have a large, established mailing list, a mail merge from Google Sheets is best. If you're just starting your mailing list and building it a little at a time, Google Contacts is the better choice. Keep in mind Gmail has a built-in send limit that caps you at 500 emails in a 24-hour period, so Gmail is best for companies with a small email list.

#3. Comply with local and international email regulations

To protect consumers against spam and data theft, there are certain requirements email marketers must follow, which can vary depending on where your recipients are — for example, the US has the CAN-SPAM Act, Canada has CASL, and the EU has GDPR. These laws generally require receiving consent before sending emails to a new contact, telling recipients where you're located, avoiding misleading headers and subject lines, and providing an opt-out link. Gmail doesn't have built-in features to help you comply, so you'll need to double-check compliance yourself.

#4. Use a business domain name

If you send a mass email from your personal email address ending in @gmail.com, there's a greater chance the message will be flagged as spam. Make sure your sender address incorporates a domain name instead — this looks more official and boosts the chances the message will land in your recipient's inbox, since email programs check the domain name reputation of a sender when deciding whether an email is spam.

#5. Consider segmentation and A/B testing

Segmentation refers to separating your mailing list into different groups based on established characteristics or purposes, such as age groups, locations, or genders, allowing you to send more relevant emails. A/B testing involves creating multiple versions of an email and sending them to randomly selected contacts to compare which version received more opens, clicks, or conversions. Both are possible in Gmail, though not as easy as with dedicated email marketing platforms — you can segment by labeling contacts in Google Contacts, or use different sheets for different segments in a Google Sheets mail merge.

#6. Track campaign performance

Perhaps the largest limitation to using Gmail for email marketing is the lack of out-of-the-box data tracking. Traditional email service providers automatically track data like open rates and click rates, but Gmail does not, although there are ways to gather some data. If you have a paid Google Workspace account, you can turn on read receipts, though this data is only partially reliable since recipients can decline to send one. You can also use Google Analytics to generate tracking links that collect click data.

#7. Use HTML email templates for Gmail

Gmail's design capabilities are minimal. While Gmail does have some layout templates, they are highly limited. Add-ons or extensions are the key way to create beautiful HTML emails with Gmail, letting you send professionally designed emails directly to your Gmail account for free by selecting a template from the sidebar, adding your images and text, and sending the message to your email list.