Google just killed my email for sending 367 cold emails over 2 weeks. heres what happened.

built an outreach pipeline. scraped 1000+ agencies. sent 367 personalized emails over 14 days at 25/day with 2.5 minute delays between each.

today google restricted my entire gmail account for "sending unwanted content."

no warning. no throttling. just gone. SMTP, IMAP, everything — locked out.

what the restriction page says

"It looks like Gmail has been used to send unwanted content. Spamming is a violation of Googles policies."

entire service unavailable. appeal submitted.

what i was actually sending

each email was individually customized. subject line referenced the recipients domain. body mentioned specific SEO findings from scanning their actual website — missing alt text count, page speed score, heading hierarchy issues.

these werent "dear sir/madam" template blasts. each one took the scanner 10 seconds to generate personalized findings.

the numbers that triggered it

• 367 total emails over ~14 days
• 25/day average (well under gmails 500/day limit)
• 2.5 minute delay between sends
• app password authentication (not OAuth)
• all sent from one gmail account

my theory: its not the volume, its the pattern. 25 emails to unknown recipients every day, most of whom never reply, some who probably marked it as spam — thats exactly what a spammer looks like to googles systems, regardless of whether the content is personalized.

what i should have done differently

1. used a dedicated sending service (sendgrid, postmark) instead of raw gmail SMTP. they handle reputation and deliverability.
2. warmed up the sending address gradually instead of jumping to 25/day immediately.
3. used a custom domain instead of @gmail.com. gmail accounts sending cold outreach is a red flag.
4. monitored bounce rates and spam complaints. i tracked replies but not complaints.

the silver lining

this happened on the same day i diversified away from cold email as my primary channel. i posted 7 IH articles, packaged a lead list for $19, built a chrome extension. if email was my only channel, id be completely dead right now.

diversification isnt just about revenue streams. its about not having a single point of failure.

appeal submitted. google says 24-48 hours to review. well see.

landing page (still works, unlike my email): https://vemtrac-outreach.pages.dev
lead list ($19): https://vemtrac-outreach.pages.dev/leads