Google's new guidelines for email senders require enhanced authentication, easy unsubscription methods, and more rigorous limits for spam. Discover more in this article.
Google has announced that from February 2024, will put special rules in place for inbox delivery. This means that will transition from what were once simply good email practices to actual requirements.
If you don’t meet those requirements your communications will likely start to get rejected. To ensure you are prepared for these new guidelines, this article will provide comprehensive details about these changes.
While we will mention Google’s changes throughout this content, the same principles apply to Yahoo. (So, if you meet Google’s requirements, you’re set for Yahoo as well! :)).
Contents
First of all, why are Google implementing these changes now?
Even though these requirements have long been common best practices for Email deliverability, many bulk senders do not yet follow them.
With these changes, Google and Yahoo now want to broaden their adoption by gradually turning those best practices into requirements.
Google and Yahoo both recognize the importance of email and are taking steps toward making it more safe and secure. By focusing on email validation, they are helping the prevention of unwanted spam and potential bad actors from reaching their customers’ inboxes.
So what exactly are the changes?
Now that we know the why of these changes, let’s talk about what will happen. For that, it’s essential to understand that the changes will occur in three different approaches:
Email authentication: want to make sure your users aren’t being deceived and can trust the supposed source of the Email. The new changes in the DMARC policies, as well as requiring all bulk senders to have a DMARC record, which will close loopholes that can be exploited to fool users about the origin of the Email.
Easy unsubscription: aims to guarantee that subscribers have the option to stop receiving newsletters if they are no longer interested. For that, now will be required that your communications have an easy ‘one-click’ unsubscription process, and the request is processed within two days.
More stringent spam rates limit: aim to avoid spam sends. Gmail has always had very effective AntiSpam filters, however, to prevent their users from receiving spam, they are going one step further and will be enforcing stricter spam rate thresholds that all senders must abide by or risk ruining your sender reputation and having all your communications being rejected or sent to the Spam folder.
When will these changes happen exactly?
- February 2024: Google will be deferring traffic on a small percentage from bulk senders who don´t meet these requirements.The small rejection rate is meant to help you to have time to identify email traffic that doesn’t meet the new guidelines. You may see messages being delayed with temporary errors during this phase.
- April 2024: Google will start rejecting a percentage of non-compliant email traffic and they will be increasing their rejection rate gradually.
- June 2024: Google will require a one-click unsubscribe method in all commercial, promotional messages. If you use E-goi, you already meet these requirements using our unsubscription link, however, you shouldn’t edit that link in a way that makes it hard to use, like using tiny letters or hard-to-see colors.
Let’s get into the details: DMARC, what is it? What’s changing?
DMARC is an e-mail authentication method that tells receiving providers what they should do if incoming Emails fail the SPF and DKIM checks.
To pass the DMARC authentications your Emails must be authenticated by SPF and DKIM, and the authenticated domain must match the same domain being used as the Sender (“From:” in your Email headers).
E-goi already provides you with all the instructions you need to set up not only the DMARC records but SPF and DKIM records as well.
So what exactly is changing in regards to DMARC? Starting in February 2024, Google will require all senders who send more than 5,000 emails per day to authenticate their sender domain with a DMARC record.
It doesn’t matter which policy you choose for your DMARC record, you can set it up with a “none” policy, which tells the receiving server to take no action, a “quarantine” policy, to classify the email as Junk/Spam, or even with a “reject” policy to reject the Email altogether.
Whichever policy you believe works better in your case is fine, but you do need one. Also, we recommend this even if you don’t send more than 5,000 emails per day, because not only do you future-proof your domain for any future changes, but a domain with a DMARC record will always improve your Email security.
Another change regarding DMARC is that Google, for their own domains which include, gmail.com and googlemail.com, will change from the more permissive policy “none”, to a “quarantine” policy.
What this means is that you will no longer be able to impersonate gmail.com addresses to send your emails using other platforms like E-goi. As those Emails fail the SPF and DKIM authentications they will be delivered in the Spam folder, or even get rejected.
If you are using a Gmail account as a sender on other platforms than Gmail, then you need to start using a new domain as your sender, perhaps consider getting your very own private domain.
What about the easy unsubscription?
Also starting in February 2024, Google will require that all marketing or subscribed messages must support the one-click unsubscribe method. The one-click unsubscribe method works by adding two specific headers to your Email:
- List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click
- List-Unsubscribe: <https://solarmora.com/unsubscribe/example>
These headers allow Email providers to make it easier for subscribers to opt-out. If you use E-goi to send your Emails don’t worry! We get you covered because all emails sent from our platform already have these headers.
Besides the headers, your Emails should include as well a very clear and visible unsubscription link in the body of the email. Again, E-goi already does this for you, but you should make sure you don’t complicate the process by making the links harder to see with small text or confusing colors.
An easier unsubscription method will eventually improve your open rates, click-through rates and reduce your complaint rate, making it less likely for your domain to have reputation problems and eventually get filtered by Gmail and other providers.
This is not required for transactional emails (for example, password reset messages, reservation confirmations, or purchase receipts) but any marketing/promotional or subscription messages like Newsletters will require it.
And finally, the complaint rates
To follow the sender guidelines, Google now will recommend all senders to keep a complaint/spam rate below 0.1% and never reach 0.3%.
Even now, senders with a complaint rate above 0.1% may already see a negative impact on their deliverability, but Google will start enforcing stricter thresholds to what they consider to be Spam.
If you do not keep a lookout for your Spam/Complaint rate all your messages can start going straight to the Spam folder. And if your situation aggravates and your complaint rate reaches 0.3% or more, you will be ineligible for reputation mitigation by Google.
Besides keeping a lookout on complaint rates on E-goi, we advise any sender to also make use of Google’s very own Postmaster Tools to monitor their domain’s reputation.
With the Postmaster tools you can keep track of all your domains and receive daily reports on your reputation, complaints, spam rate, other delivery errors, and other useful information regarding any Emails that you send to Google.
Conclusion
The new Google guidelines show up as a way to help the adoption of good email practices and its deliverability, which follows the effort against spam and consolidates email as a communication channel more secure, user-friendly, and spam-free
Google isn’t the only one doing this, Yahoo and other providers are also adopting a similar approach, and more will soon follow.
To guarantee the reputation of your emails, you may should consider these practices as fundamental email hygiene, and an ongoing process to keep the Inboxes safe from unwanted Emails, misleading communications, and even Phishing or Scams.
Find more information about this topic, check out Gmail and Yahoo deliverability best practices.