Attention Bulk Email Senders: New Rules by Yahoo & Google

Google and Yahoo Announce New Requirements for Bulk Email Senders

In a move to combat spam and improve email deliverability, Google and Yahoo have announced new requirements for bulk email senders. These requirements, which will take effect in February 2024, are designed to make it more difficult for spammers to send unwanted emails and to make it easier for recipients to unsubscribe from email lists.

Cast your eyes upon the three pillars of this brave new world:

Authenticate Outgoing Emails

Requires set up these email authentication methods for your domain. Authenticated messages:

Help protect recipients from malicious messages, such as spoofing and phishing messages.
Help protect you and your organization from being impersonated.
Are less likely to be rejected or marked as spam by Gmail.

Set up email authentication for each of your sending domains at your domain provider. In addition to following the instructions we provide, you should also refer to your domain provider's email authentication instructions.

SPF

SPF prevents spammers from sending unauthorized messages that appear to be from your domain. Set up SPF by publishing an SPF record at your domain. The SPF record for your domain should reference all email senders for your domain. If third-party senders aren't included in your SPF record, messages from these senders are more likely to be marked as spam.

DKIM

Turn on DKIM for the domain that sends your email. Receiving servers use DKIM to verify that the domain owner actually sent the message.

DMARC

DMARC lets you tell receiving servers what to do with messages from your domain that don’t pass SPF or DKIM. Set up DMARC by publishing a DMARC record for your domain. To pass DMARC authentication, messages must be authenticated by SPF and/or DKIM. The authenticating domain must be the same domain that's in the message From: header.

Keep Spam Rates Low

Spam Rate Crackdown: Prepare for your spam score to be scrutinized under a microscope. Gmail's 0.1% threshold is your new Everest - keep your reported spam rate below it, and never, ever let it touch 0.3%. Exceed it, and your emails might as well be cast into the void.

Provide Easy Unsubscribing Option

The reign of hidden unsubscribe buttons is over! One-click emancipation for recipients is now the law. Make it prominent, make it easy, make them sing with joy as they escape your clutches (should they so desire). Remember, a frustrated unsubscribe attempt breeds nothing but spam complaints.

Get help from a 3rd-party DMARC service (recommended)

Reports can be difficult to read and interpret in raw format. We recommend using a third-party service that specializes in DMARC to receive, store, and analyze your reports:

Depending on your mail volume, it's possible to get many reports each day, up to hundreds.
Several factors determine the number of reports you get, including: how many servers you send to, how much mail you send, and the reporting options specified in your DMARC policy record.
Without a third-party service, you might need to create a dedicated Group or mailbox to receive and store the reports.
Third-party services can combine individual reports.