As you may have heard, Gmail and Yahoo! are raising the bar to ensure a more secure email experience by tightening down on spam checks. As of February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo! will require all email senders (that’s you!) to adhere to new guidelines, transforming email authentication and deliverability best practices from a nice-to-have to a MUST-have.
What are Google and Yahoo’s new sender requirements?
To help protect inboxes from spam emails, Google and Yahoo! introduced a new set of requirements. These changes apply to all senders who send emails to Gmail and Yahoo! Accounts.
For a detailed list of requirements, you can head over to Gmail’s Help Centre. But we’ve outlined some of the most important changes below.
If you’re sending emails to either Gmail or Yahoo! addresses, you must:
- Authenticate your email domain by using security protocols like DKIM, and SPF. If your business owns its domain, you will need to take extra steps to set up a DMARC policy. More on that here.
- Implement a one-click list-unsubscribe header and honour unsubscribes within two days. Vision6 takes care of compliance by adding an unsubscribe link to the bottom of all your emails.
- Maintain a spam complaint rate under 0.3%, which means no more than three spam reports for every 1,000 messages. However, as an industry best practice we recommend keeping your spam complaint rates under 0.1%.
How to prepare for these tighter restrictions
We get it – navigating sender requirements and compliance can feel overwhelming. But, fear not! These requirements play a crucial role in reinforcing trust in your email campaigns.
They also act as a safeguard, preventing your messages from being flagged as spam, rejected, or undelivered.
Luckily, Vision6 automatically handles some of these changes for you, however there are still things you need to set-up.
In this blog post, we’ve broken down six straightforward steps to help you prepare for upcoming changes and maintain compliance with ease.
1. Set up SPF and DKIM email authentication
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) are the two essential forms of email authentication.
SPF allows you to list all the IP addresses that are authorised to send an email on behalf of your domain. This helps servers like Gmail and Yahoo! identify that the email domain you’re sending from is in fact coming from your established IP addresses.
DKIM uses asymmetric encryption to sign and verify your email. This confirms that the email has not been altered on its way to the intended recipient.
Set up your domain in your Vision6 account and it will automatically configure SPF and DKIM.
2. Follow up with DMARC authentication for your domain
DMARC or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance is the third foundation in authentication and defines the process of what to do with messages that fail SPF and DKIM checks. This could be a case of spoofing or someone pretending to send mail from your domain in which case your DMARC process can tell receiving inboxes to complete either of the following:
- None: receiving inbox does nothing
- Quarantine: message goes to spam
- Reject: message is not delivered and will be translated as a temporary bounce
So what do you need to do?
If you own your domain:
Firstly, you will need to check and ensure that your sender domain is set up and configured in our platform. See: How to Check Your Domain Set up.
If you haven’t set up your domain, you can do so by implementing these steps. See: How to Set up Your Domain Records.
We recommend you employ your IT team to update your domain’s DNS records and set up self-authentication by instituting a DMARC policy with your domain provider. This is an important step to help build your strong sender reputation. You’ll need to check that your domain provider has applied DMARC Policy to your domain.
If you don’t own your domain:
The new requirements mean that we must authenticate each message using the domain found in the “from address”. So, if you don’t own your own domain and can’t set up this kind of authentication and DMARC policy, Vision6 will authenticate messages for you.
For example, if you are sending from xyzdounts@gmail.com, we will modify your “from address” to xyzdonuts=gmail.com@au.v6send.net. But don’t worry, subscribers will still see the original name ‘XYZ Donuts’ in the “from” field, so nothing will appear to change for them.
However, we recommend that you refrain from using your freemail (such as gmail.com, hotmail.com, etc.) when sending bulk messages as this might still mark your emails as spam. See: Freemail Email Domain vs. Own Email Domain.
3. Don’t impersonate Gmail From: headers
From February 2024, Gmail’s default DMARC policy is changing from “none” to “quarantine”. This means that any email using free domains like @gmail and @yahoo, that are sent outside of these apps will go to the spam folder.
It is best practice to use your business email address associated with your domain to help ensure that your emails get delivered to your intended recipients. If you do not have a domain yet, consider getting one soon to avoid any deliverability issues.
4. Make sure the domain in your “From” email matches your SPF or DKIM domain
This simply means that the “from” email address that you use to send emails, matches the domain authenticated with either SPF domain or the DKIM domain.
For example, if the authenticated domain name (website) is vision6.com in DKIM set-up, your email address should match that domain name ie. marketing@vision6.com.
5. Keep your spam rates below 0.3%
Anytime your email is marked as spam, your spam rate increases. If your email spam rates continue to exceed 0.3%, your email messages will most likely go straight to spam inboxes and never see the light of day.
We recommend keeping your email spam complaints under 0.1% as it aligns with industry standards. This ensures a healthy sender reputation, demonstrates a commitment to delivering relevant content, and fosters trust with email service providers such as Gmail and Yahoo!.
Make sure you continually monitor your spam rate, which can be done in your Vision6 reporting dashboard. If you want more information on how to keep spam rates down and maintain a healthy sender reputation, you can read more here: How to get your emails in more inboxes (and avoid spam).
6. Make unsubscribing easy
Your subscribers should not have to jump through hoops to unsubscribe. The more complicated you make this process, the more likely users will report your messages as spam. To help keep your emails compliant, Vision6 automatically adds an unsubscribe link to the bottom of all your emails.
