Starting September 8, 2026, the Gmail Verified Sender Program helps eligible, verified political committees in the United States reliably deliver policy-compliant and non-abusive messages to personal Gmail accounts on an ongoing basis.
By adhering to these requirements, participating senders actively contribute to a safer, more trustworthy email ecosystem, enhancing security and delivery experience for all recipients.
Gmail users remain fully in control of their inboxes, with multiple strong levers at their disposal. They can mark a message as spam, block a specific sender, and unsubscribe from unwanted lists.
Program Eligibility
The Gmail Verified Sender Program is open to any candidate, political party, PAC, or other political committee that is a 527 tax-exempt organization and registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) or a State, Local, or Tribal Election Authority.
To enroll, eligible participants must:
- Verify committee sending domain with Campaign Verify, a nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) nonprofit that verifies integrity and authenticity of communications related to political campaigns. Learn more about Campaign Verify.
- Use a sending domain that hosts or redirects to a public website associated with your committee.
- Have a Postmaster Tools account associated and verified with the sending domain. Learn how to create a Postmaster Tools account.
Program Policies
Important: To comply with the Verified Sender Program Policies, keep your spam rate below 0.3%. If users mark more than 0.3% of your emails as spam over a 14-day average, you will violate this policy.
Participants must follow the Program Policies to ensure Google is able to continue to deliver a positive experience for everyone using Gmail. Failure to comply with these policies may result in removal from the Gmail Verified Sender Program.
- Compliance: Ensure your messages are compliant with sender requirements. This can be verified using the Compliance status dashboard.
- In order to be eligible to enroll in the program, or re-enroll after a suspension, senders must maintain at least a 7-day sending history from the same primary domain. A sizable, consistent daily volume (at least hundreds of messages per day) must be sent to unique personal Gmail accounts to ensure Postmaster Tools generates sufficient data for evaluation.
- Authentication: Sending domain must have SPF configured and messages must be DKIM signed by your sending domain.
- Spam: Do not send spam, including unsolicited, repetitive, nonsensical, or unrelated commercial content.
- Follow the sender requirements for delivering messages to personal Gmail accounts.
- Please keep in mind that your definition of “unsolicited” mail may differ from your email recipients’ perception. Exercise judgment when sending email to a large number of recipients, even if the recipients elected to receive emails from you in the past and increase volume slowly to avoid delivery problems.
- Make sure that you’re sending messages at a reasonable volume, expected by your recipients and that your messages have content that recipients are interested in.
- Users have several ways to indicate which messages they’re not interested in, for example, marking messages as spam. To help prevent high spam rates, we recommend that you implement one-click unsubscribe as described in our sender requirements and honor users’ unsubscribes. Learn more about bulk email best practices.
- Infrastructure: Avoid sending messages with shared infrastructure. Although using a shared IP address does not affect program eligibility, it can result in classification and deliverability issues for all senders on that shared IP, despite program participation. Learn more about shared resources in the sender requirements.
- Gmail Program Policies: Your messages must adhere to Google’s anti-abuse policies. Learn more about the Gmail Program Policies.
We reserve the right to modify these policies at any time. Please also refer to Google's Terms of Service for more information.
Program Policy Violation Enforcement
Failure to comply with the Program Policies may result in a 7 day suspension or permanent termination from the program. If suspended or terminated, your domain can continue to send email to Gmail recipients and will be subject to Gmail’s standard spam filtering. Violations of Google’s Terms of Service will be subject to standard enforcement.
You will be able to see compliance and program status in Postmaster Tools to verify inclusion in the program after verification. Program suspensions and terminations are communicated through Postmaster Tools. Learn more about the Compliance status dashboards.
We reserve the right to terminate participation in the Program for an egregious violation.
Gmail Verified Sender Program FAQs
What is Postmaster Tools?Postmaster Tools (postmaster.google.com) is a tool provided by Google that helps senders track data on large volumes of emails sent and find data about your sending domain. You can view different dashboards to understand details like Gmail delivery errors, spam reports, feedback loop, and more.
To be eligible for the Gmail Verified Sender Program, you must have a Postmaster Tools account associated and verified with the sending domain. Learn how to create a Postmaster Tools account.
Submit your information here to receive resources to help get you started with Campaign Verify.
You will first need to complete a verification request in their submission portal to verify the committee’s identity. Upon successful completion of identity verification, you will be able to submit the committee’s sender domain, which Campaign Verify will also verify.
For more information, please visit Campaign Verify's FAQ page, which highlights important details on the program.
You will receive confirmation of verification from Campaign Verify. Once verified, your status with the Gmail Verified Sender Program will be active within 1-2 business days and can be tracked through the Postmaster Tools compliance dashboard.
Gmail's filtering capabilities and security protections are built to give users the best overall experience by delivering the emails they want to see. Google's spam filters detect and filter over 99.9% of spam, phishing, and malware from ever reaching users’ inboxes. Google’s filtering of spam email is based on user feedback and does not discriminate against any candidate, political belief, or political entity.
While program enrollment establishes sender authenticity, deliverability ultimately depends on your ongoing compliance with the Program Policies, including the sender requirements and positive recipient engagement as reflected in your domain’s spam rate.
To learn more about bulk email best practices, start with these resources:
Use the Compliance status dashboard in Postmaster Tools to verify that your outgoing email complies with the sender requirements.
Learn more about the Compliance status dashboard in Postmaster Tools.
To be eligible for the Gmail Verified Sender Program, your Committee must comply with the Program Policies, including the sender requirements. If suspended or terminated, your domain can continue to send email to Gmail recipients and will be subject to Gmail’s standard spam filtering.
If you’re currently not compliant for the program, please address technical and spam-rate compliance and your traffic in order to be automatically re-enrolled. After you have resolved all technical and spam-rate compliance issues, your domain will be automatically re-enrolled in the program within 7 days. You can check enrollment status in Postmaster Tools.
Does the spam reporting rate have to be below 0.3% in order to enroll in the program?
How is the 14-day spam rate evaluated for the purposes of enrolling in the program and remaining eligible?
Postmaster Tools measures compliance across an ongoing, rolling 14-day window that incorporates your pre-enrollment average user-reported spam rate. Because pre-enrollment traffic carries over, we recommend checking your daily spam rate and other security requirements in the Postmaster Tools Compliance status dashboard to maintain your status in the program.