Gmail and Yahoo recently announced that they’re working to aggressively filter out unwanted emails by setting a higher bar for commercial email senders. New requirements take effect in February 2024 and largely focus on better sender authentication and email relevance.
Marketers sending legitimate (opted-in) emails have little to worry about. In fact—we think this is great news. A safer, more relevant inbox means more likelihood that your messages will be read by those who want to receive them.
In this article, we’ll unpack what’s changing, what it means for your email marketing, and what you need to do now to prepare for the new year.
What’s changing?
From a high level, the new requirements affect the following:
- Domain authentication (DKIM, SPF, DMARC)
- Unsubscribe practices
- Acceptable spam complaint rates
- Infrastructure for sending
When will these requirements be enforced?
Yahoo is targeting the first quarter of 2024 while Gmail will begin enforcement in February 2024.
Who’s impacted?
These mandates affect bulk senders of commercial email (sending 5,000 outbound emails/day to Gmail or Yahoo addresses). Remember that the initial announcements don’t specify that a sender must send 5000 messages each day, or within a certain time frame, though. So we recommend all commercial email senders comply.
Non-compliance with the new requirements could result in emails being marked as spam or not being delivered to the recipient’s inbox at all. This could have serious consequences for businesses, including lost revenue, decreased customer engagement, and damage to their reputation.
On the other hand, implementing email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC can help businesses build trust with their customers and improve their email marketing ROI.
By ensuring secure email delivery, businesses can protect their reputation from exact domain impersonation-based phishing attacks and increase the likelihood of their emails being opened and read by their recipients.
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What’s changing exactly and what do you need to do about it?
For email marketers who want to be treated as legitimate senders in 2024, here’s what you need to know:
Authentication
What’s changing:
Senders will need to verify their sending domain by setting up either SPF or DKIM protocols.
DMARC is required for bulk email senders (exceeding 5000 emails/day). This means that at least one of the domains authenticating the mail (in SPF or DKIM) has to match the visible “From Domain” your email recipients see.
What to do:
Authenticate your email-sending identity by setting up either SPF or DKIM for your domain.
Gmail recommends following these best practices, while Yahoo strongly recommends also implementing DMARC. We recommend setting up both SPF and DKIM while you start taking steps toward DMARC authentication.
Handling unsubscribes
What’s changing:
Both Gmail and Yahoo will require that senders provide a one-click unsubscribe and implement unsubscribe requests within two days. This goes above and beyond the legal requirements of CAN-SPAM, which provides 10 days.
What to do:
Add an unsubscribe link at the top or bottom of your emails that provides contacts with a single-click opt-out.
Spam/Complaint Rates
What’s changing:
Both Gmail and Yahoo are requiring that senders maintain spam complaint rates below a given threshold (0.3% for Gmail). However, Gmail specifically states they want senders less than 0.1% and deliverability rates will begin to diminish beyond that point.
What to do:
First of all, let’s define what this means: your spam rate, or spam complaint rate, is the number of recipients that report your message as spam compared to the total number of emails that were delivered.
Monitor your spam complaint rate (this can be done directly within Delivra or your Google Postmaster account). Yahoo also offers a Complaint Feedback Loop (CFL) that you can sign up for with your DKIM domain. Maintain a clean list and promptly remove or sunset disengaged subscribers.
Additional infrastructure-related requirements
Ensure that sending domains or IPs have valid forward and reverse DNS records, also referred to as PTR records.
Format messages according to the Internet Message Format standard (RFC 5322).
How can Delivra help?
Deliverability is at the core of everything we do at Delivra. We’re picky about who we allow onto our platform and enforce our standards for legitimate email sending. Our platform supports domain authorization by easily generating your DKIM key as well as checking for SPF and DMARC authentication. It’s also possible to identify critical bounces, which may be occurring as a result of poor sender reputation.
And to top it off, we also offer deliverability consulting services, should you ever need additional support.
It’s simple, Mailbox providers are protecting their customers—the inbox users. The better the end-user experience, the more likely those users are to keep coming around. Unwanted, insecure, untrustworthy email gets in the way of that.
By putting firm requirements around commercial emails, Google and Yahoo are raising the bar for marketers—and we’re applauding that shift. In recent years, this is the most substantial policy shift we’ve seen among mailbox providers, but we suspect others are likely to follow suit.
Want some additional support as you navigate these changes? Contact us and ask about our deliverability consulting services.
