The email world is buzzing with the news from Gmail and Yahoo–beginning February 1, 2024 both email service providers will implement stricter rules for senders of bulk email.
There’s a lot in that sentence. What are the new rules? Who is considered a sender of bulk email? And what happens if you don’t meet the requirements by February 1, 2024?
In today’s post, I’m breaking down all the details on these new rules and how you can implement them in your own email marketing. If you’re a writer or solopreneur wondering if this post is for you (are you even considered a bulk sender if you only have a 100 subscribers on your list?) keep reading! These changes will impact anyone sending mass emails or sending emails through a marketing platform.
The good news? It’s not as scary or as difficult as you think. Ready to get started?
What are the new Gmail and Yahoo rules? And who do they apply to?
Both Google and Yahoo have notified the email industry of new deliverability rules that will go into effect on February 1, 2024 for folks sending more than 5,000 emails per day.
If you are sending more than 5,000 emails per day you must:
- Authentic your email domain using protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
- Put into effect a one-click unsubscribe mechanism and honor unsubscribes within 2 days
- Keep your spam complaint rate under 0.3%
While these rules may seem annoying or like one more thing you have to do, they serve a powerful purpose. Gmail and Yahoo are seeking to create a better email experience for their users by protecting them against malicious actors, complicated unsubscribe processes, and spam.
When you authenticate your email domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, you’re preventing spoofing and phishing attacks. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are different methods to verify that an email was actually sent by that domain. Here’s a helpful explainer about SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
One-click unsubscribes and a quicker unsubscribe time window (2 days vs. CAN-SPAM’s requirement of 10 days) allows users to more easily opt-out of messages they don’t want to receive. Have you ever tried to unsubscribe from a list and ended up spending 5 minutes filling out various forms? It’s frustrating. Well that practice will soon be gone if that company wants to meet these new requirements.
Lastly, requiring a spam complaint rate under 0.3% will encourage email marketers to send relevant and timely content. Who doesn’t want email that actually matters instead of junk?
So while these new rules may seem like just another thing you have to do, in the end it will create a better experience for your contacts and improved deliverability for you.
Why you should implement these changes even if you’re not sending 5,000 emails per day
You may be thinking, does this apply to me if I’m sending less than 5,000 emails per day? Can I ignore these new rules until I get to that point?
So the technical answer is: these new rules don’t apply to you if you’re sending less than 5,000 emails per day.
However, I’m here to advocate that everyone should update their email marketing programs to follow these new rules.
Here’s why:
- Even if you’re not sending 5,000 emails per day now, you could in the future as your email list grows. Do future you a favor and set it up now rather than waiting until it’s critical.
- Authenticating your domain protects you and your contacts from spoofing and phishing attacks
- These rules will create a better user experience and help keep your email list happy and healthy
- Overall, this will improve your email deliverability (the number of emails that make it to the inbox vs. bounce)
Think of this like preventative medicine. You may not need it now, but it will help you and the people around you in the long run.
What happens if you don’t implement these changes by February 2024?
If these new rules are news to you, February 1, 2024 can feel like it’s coming up way too soon. So what happens if you can’t implement all these changes before then?
If you’re sending more than 5,000 emails per day
Your email deliverability will be impacted. You’ll see a higher rate of bounces (when an email is not delivered to the recipient’s inbox) and a higher rate of quarantines in spam or junk folders. Which all boils down to less people seeing your amazing email.
If you’re sending less than 5,000 emails per day
More than likely your email deliverability won’t suffer. You may notice a slight increase in bounces or hear reports of landing in a spam folder, but nothing catastrophic. If the February 1 deadline comes and goes, don’t panic. Just implement these changes when you have time.
How do you implement these changes?
Now the big question–how do you implement these changes? The exact instructions will be different for each person depending on your email marketing platform and your domain host.
Here are the basic steps:
- Authenticate your email sending domain
- Check that your unsubscribe process includes a one-click mechanism and you honor all requests within 2 days
- Monitor your spam complaints and keep them below 0.3%
1. Authenticate your email sending domain
To authenticate your email sending domain you’ll need to follow two steps:
- Get SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records from your email marketing service
- Update those records in your DNS
If you remember from the beginning of this post, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are different ways to authenticate that an email is coming from the domain it says it is. And a DNS is what links a domain to different IP addresses. Essentially connecting your domain to the different places it needs to go. Here’s more information on what a DNS does.
So what you’re doing here is updating your DNS so that it recognizes your email marketing platform as an authorized user of your domain.
IMPORTANT
If you are using @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, or any other free or public domain to send your email marketing, it will be more complicated to authenticate the domain. You’ll need to follow additional steps and your email may still be flagged as spam or junk since it’s coming from a free or public domain.
Best email marketing practices are to create an email address that uses a domain you own. Most of the time this is the same domain as your website. E.g., my marketing email address is ginnye@glcubel.com because I own the domain glcubel.com.
Sometimes you can set up an email address through your domain host (GoDaddy, Bluehost, HostGator, WordPress, etc.). You can check by Googling, “set up email in [insert domain host name]”.
Here is another instance in which Google search can be your best friend. If you’re unsure of how to obtain the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records from your email marketing platform, try Googling “authenticate domain with [insert email marketing platform]”.
Here are the instructions for a few of the top email marketing platforms popular with writers and solopreneurs:
Once you have your records, the next step is to add them into your DNS.
You can access your DNS through your domain host. This is where you register, pay for, and monitor your domain. Some common domain hosts are GoDaddy, Bluehost, HostGator, and Domain.com. Your domain host could also be the place where you manage your website (your CMS). For example, I purchase and registered my domain through WordPress which is also my CMS.
A good rule of thumb here is wherever you had to enter in your credit card information to purchase your domain is most likely your domain host.
After you’ve identified your domain host, follow their instructions for updating your DNS. Below are resource articles on managing and updating your DNS. If you don’t see your domain host or CMS in the list below, try Googling “[domain host or CMS name] dns management”.
I know I say, “try Googling…” a lot, but trust me, it works. I’ve self-taught myself a lot of things through the power of Google! YouTube is also a great resource if you’re more visual.
When you’re finished updating your records, wait about an hour and then test it to see if the records are updated. There are 2 ways to test.
Test your domain authentication
- Send a test email from your email marketing platform to a gmail account you have access to
- Open the email on a desktop (this is harder to do on mobile) and on the right hand side click the 3 dots
- Select “show original”
- Verify that you passed SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
- Use a checker tool like Dmarcly or Dmarcian
- Enter your domain (without the www. Or @ symbol in front of it) and run a scan
- Note–these tools will often tell you that you don’t have a valid DMARC record. Don’t panic if you get this notice. Check to see that your value is set to p=none. This is the minimum value you need and is acceptable for Gmail and Yahoo. The tools are merely recommending you create a stricter record (i.e., higher than p=none)..
- Another note–some users report that these tools return that no records are found even though they passed the authentication when checking on Gmail (option 1 above). Since Gmail matters most here (they’re the ones imposing the rule), if you’re able to test with option 1 above that will give you the best indicator that your domain is authenticated and good to go.
2. Check your unsubscribe process
The second new deliverability rule is that email marketers have an unsubscribe process that includes a one-click mechanism and honors all requests within 2 days.
If you’re using a mainstream email marketing platform like Convertkit, Constant Contact, MailerLite, Active Campaign, MailChimp, etc., then you’re probably already adhering to this rule! Most of these platforms allow subscribers to remove themselves with a single click on a landing page vs. filling out a form or typing in their email address. These platforms also typically record an unsubscribe within seconds of someone clicking the button.
If you’re in doubt about your email marketing platform or just want to double check, you can test this yourself by sending a test email. Since this test will involve you unsubscribing an email, ensure you’re using an address that you don’t need to send messages to afterwards. Or that your email marketing platform allows you to resubscribe contacts.
If you have a Gmail account, there’s a handy trick to create a new email address that still delivers to your inbox. You just add “+ [word or number of your choice]” and it creates a second email. For example, if your Gmail address is writer@gmail.com you can create writer+1@gmail.com or writer+test@gmail.com to create a new, working address. Test with this email since it’s essentially disposable.
When you receive the email, click the unsubscribe link and verify that it only takes one click after that to unsubscribe. Once you’ve clicked, log into the back end of your email marketing platform, find your contact profile that you sent the test email to and verify that it’s registering as “unsubscribed”.
If you do not experience a one-click unsubscribe process or it takes longer than 2 days to record an unsubscribe, reach out to your email marketing provider and ask them when or how they plan to update this to comply with the new Gmail or Yahoo deliverability rules.
3. Monitor your spam complaints
The last deliverability rule is a little more ambiguous to fix than the first two. It asks that email marketers monitor their spam complaints and keep it below 0.3% of their total delivered emails. This is less than 3 people per 1,000 delivered emails.
However, there’s no DNS record or magic button to update here. You can’t check a box and move on.
To keep your spam complaint rate low, you’ll want to follow some email marketing best practices. Such as:
- Don’t use misleading subject lines
- Only send emails to folks who explicitly sign up or opt-in to your email list
- Ensure the unsubscribe link is easy to find in the footer of your email
- Some email marketers even put it in the header to make it easier to unsubscribe. But this isn’t completely necessary as many people know to look in the footer
- Remind your subscribers why they’re receive communications from you in either the header or footer or your email
- E.g., you’re receiving Ginnye’s Email Newsletter because you signed up on www.glcubel.com.
- Suppress contacts who don’t open your emails and only send them the most interesting or important information
- Use segmentation to create lists of contacts with specific characteristics and send them targeted or relevant content
You don’t need to implement all these tactics. You can implement one or two or a combination of these. Feel out what works best for you and your business as well as the capabilities of your email marketing platform.
Next, you may be asking how you can check that you’re underneath the 0.3% spam complaint requirement. You can either monitor it in your email marketing platform or by signing up for the Google Postmaster Tool.
Not every email marketing platform will show you the spam complaint rate or they may require you to upgrade to a higher priced package. If your platform will share this information, it will most likely be in a deliverability or unsubscribe report.
If your platform doesn’t readily share this information, you can sign up for the Google Postmaster Tool. This will allow you to monitor spam complaint rates for emails sent to Gmail users. Note–it won’t provide spam information for your contacts who aren’t Gmail users. This is still a helpful tool though as it can give you a baseline for how your emails are doing and you can make adjustments if you start to see your spam complaint rate get close to 0.3%.
Conclusion
Whether you’re currently a bulk sender or aspiring to be one in the future, implementing these changes and adhering to the new Gmail and Yahoo deliverability rules will help you create a happy and healthy email list.
If the steps above feel overwhelming, break them into smaller steps and tackle them over a couple days or weeks instead of all at once.
Or if your email marketing program could use a refresh or you want some “hands on keyboard” help, check out my consulting services. I specialize in helping writers, solopreneurs, and creatives develop authentic and impactful email marketing.