Google's 'Unknown Sender' Policy

Google has updated its default calendar settings to tackle unsolicited meeting invitations to personal emails to combat spam. This update aims to prevent spam invites from unnecessarily blocking Gmail users' calendars and being inundated with spam requests.

In this article, we'll cover how Chili Piper is handling this scenario:

Table of Contents:

• Additional Context
• How is this related to Chili Piper?
• How does Chili Piper handle this scenario?
• Other Options

Additional Context

This setting is only a default when the prospect's contact email is a personal email address. This default setting should not affect calendar invitations to business emails.

If a calendar invitation is sent to a personal email, and you have not interacted with them via email, they will need to confirm their booking by clicking on a confirmation link within their email inbox. 

As an example: 

1. Contact uses a business email: joe@acme.com wants to buy from mary@spicycompany.com. Joe wants to book a meeting with them, but they have never interacted. Joe books a meeting with Mary from her scheduling link. The meeting invite appears in Joe's calendar as expected. 
   
   
2. Contact uses a personal email: bob@gmail.com wants to buy from mary@spicycompany.com. Bob wants to book a meeting with them, but they have never interacted. Bob books a meeting with Mary from her scheduling link. The meeting invite shows in Bob's calendar only after Bob approves this invite in his email.

How is this related to Chili Piper?

If the sender is not a known source within your Gmail instance and matches the criteria described above, prospects using personal emails may not find the meeting invites unless they mark Chili Piper as a known sender. If they don't, they might miss the invites on their respective calendars and, consequently, miss meetings.

Chili Piper is analyzing and working on some options to mitigate this in the future, but we do have some best practices to share and help with in this scenario.

How does Chili Piper handle this scenario?

If a prospect submits your form with a @gmail.com address, Chili Piper will display the following options in the meeting's confirmation screen:

The "Add to Calendar" option will open a new tab with the users' Google Calendar instance, where they can check the invite and Save it, making sure that it will be added to their calendars.

In Concierge, the redirect will happen after they select this option based on your router's settings.

If the "Thanks, I see it" option is selected, the prospect will stay at the confirmation screen or, in Concierge, be redirected based on your router's settings.

It's also important to mention that, for Concierge behavior, we pause the redirect mentioned above ONLY if the prospect submitted the form with a @gmail.com domain, so they have time to choose within the options above. 

Other Options

There are also some workarounds to be evaluated to mitigate this behavior:

Option 1:

Your reminders can be adjusted to include language reminding your prospects using personal emails that they have to accept the meeting invitation if they haven't already. Here's an example of a mail reminder that can be sent to your prospects:

Subject: "Our meeting tomorrow - please make sure the invite shows up in your calendar

Body: Hi [Name],

We're all set for our meeting tomorrow. If you don't have the calendar invite on your calendar yet, please make sure to check your inbox for a message from Google that allows you to approve the invitation.  

• When presented, click on the "I know the sender" button to add that email address to your Google Calendar safe senders list for future events to be added automatically.
• Click Yes on the event invitation to ensure it is added to your Google Calendar.

Looking forward to connecting"

Option 2:

If one of the Chili Piper's invites is flagged as an unknown sender, you or prospects using personal emails should see something like this in the invite:

And, within the invite email:

Clicking the "I know the sender" button should automatically include the Chili Piper's recipient in your or the prospect's known sender's list. 

If this option is unavailable for you or your prospects, we still have more options to cover and avoid this scenario below.

Option 3:

1. Open Google Calendar
   
   
2. In the top-right, click the "Settings" icon
   
   
3. Click "Settings"
   
   
4. On the left-side menu,  under "General," click Event settings:
   
   
5. Find the "Add invitations to my calendar" setting. You can use command + F (Mac) or Control + F (Windows) in your web browser to quickly find it:
   
   
6. Select the "From everyone" option. This way, all invitations should be automatically added to your calendar

Option 4:

If you're unwilling to use the setting above, we can make Chili Piper's mail and domain a known sender within your Gmail instance.

1. Open your Gmail inbox
2. Click the hub in the top-right
   
   
   
3. Select the "Contacts" option
   
   
   
4. Select "Create Contact" and then "Create a single contact"
   
   
   
5. Chili Piper's emails and new events notifications come from noreply@chilipiper.com, so this email will be used in the contact information screen that just opened.
   
   
6. Once done, hit "Save"