On Feb. 1, 2024, Google and Yahoo started enforcing new requirements for bulk email senders. The guidelines largely focus on three areas: authentication of outgoing emails, reported spam rates and the ability to easily unsubscribe from email lists.
Dana Carr, director of email marketing for customer data platform vendor Optimove, recommends a couple of strategies to avoid having legitimate messages flagged as spam. First, pay attention to send times. Many bulk emails are sent at the top or bottom of the hour, which makes it easy for people to report them as spam altogether.
She also suggests using preference centers, which let users dictate the frequency of emails, as well as the categories and products included in the messages. Preference centers not only reduce email volume, but they often increase engagement with emails, Carr said.
The requirements apply at the domain level, which means they apply to all of the emails sent by the organization using the domain, not just marketing. That includes sales teams, particularly, business development representatives and sales development representatives that often rely heavily on outbound cold email tactics.
Google has, for years, taken steps to protect its revenue source, including adding tabs to sort out promotional and social emails in Gmail. Phelan believes the latest moves are another way to address the problem. The natural reaction, he said, is to filter out the noise by using tactics like authentication to help decide who reaches the inbox.
A report from Customers.ai, which sells tools to help businesses better identify their website visitors, suggest many B2B sectors are experiencing reported spam rates far above the level of 0.1% suggested by Google and Yahoo and even surpassing the 0.3% threshold that senders should never reach.
Google Workspace inboxes are email accounts managed by businesses or educational institutions that reside on Google servers. While it was initially unclear whether the bulk email restrictions would apply to Google Workspace accounts, Google eventually confirmed they did not.
Outbound sales teams in the B2B sector are getting much of the attention around the new bulk email restrictions. Unlike marketing, cold sales outreach in B2B relies mainly on two channels: email and phone calls.
Phelan prefers marketers take the lead on outreach with account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns. A multichannel approach to ABM will expose prospects to messages in display ads and on social media, for example, in addition to email. The downside of the ABM approach? It takes a lot more work to plan and build than email.
Natalie Jackson is Director of Demand Generation at CBIZ, co-host of the podcast Humans of Email and a MarTech contributor. She agrees that a multichannel approach will not only keep marketing organizations from running afoul of new bulk sender restrictions, but will also deliver more insights about marketing channels and revenue streams. That includes putting marketing in a position to see how sales outreach compares to other channels.
The goal of the ERR is to reduce abuse and unfair usage of Exchange Online resource, according to Microsoft. Exchange Online was not designed to support bulk or high-volume transactional email, but Microsoft has not enforced limits on bulk email until now.
Currently, Exchange Online enforces a Recipient Rate limit of 10,000 recipients. The new 2,000-message ERR limit will become a sub-limit within the 10,000 Recipient Rate limit. Users who send to less than 2,000 external recipients in a 24 hour period, will still be able to send to 10,000 total recipients.
Email senders can use the new hub to enroll in Complaint Feedback Loop (CFL) management. Enrolled senders will receive a report when recipients mark their emails as spam, allow them to optimize their target audience and email frequency.
The Sender Hub Dashboard also features information on AMP, Email Structured Data and Schema and Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI). Email senders can use the Hub to access deliverability information as well, including Yahoo sender requirements and recommendations on how to send emails to Yahoo users and error code explanations for senders who encounter issues or SMTP errors.
Google and Yahoo have announced new rules for bulk email senders effective February 2024, focusing on authentication, spam-rate control, and simplified unsubscription processes to combat spam and enhance inbox safety. This initiative is likely to set a new industry standard as it aims to foster a safer email ecosystem.
At MailerLite, we've always been proactive in maintaining a low spam rate, with our own anti-spam policy enforcing a spam rate of 0.2%. This aligns with the new guidelines and also showcases our long-standing commitment to providing a high-quality, spam-free email experience for both senders and recipients.
Google and Yahoo will require bulk senders, defined by the inbox providers as people who send 5,000 messages to users of their services, to enable a one-click list-unsubscribe header. This is a feature that allows email recipients to unsubscribe from emails from within the email client with a click, rather than trying to find the unsubscribe link in an email footer.
Bulk senders will also need to set up another security protocol, DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance).
DMARC ensures emails are genuinely coming from the domain they claim to be from, by checking the alignment of the SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) records. A DMARC record is a TXT record in your domain's DNS settings.
MailerLite users who are yet to set up a DMARC record will see a disclaimer in the domains section of their dashboard. If you see this message and you send over 5,000 emails to Yahoo or Google accounts, be sure to set up DMARC.
When trying to authenticate your domain, our app will recognize your hosting provider and show relevant help articles. Our support team has also created video walkthroughs of the authentication process for some of the most popular website hosts.
There are plenty of online generators you can use for this, including MailerCheck's DMARC monitoring tool. Just choose the relevant settings and the tool will create a record based on your choices. It's free to use for a single domain.
Update your welcome email: Make sure your welcome email lets subscribers know what to expect, you can even go a step further and allow them to self-segment based on their preference so subscribers only receive the emails they truly want
Email authentication is crucial for sending email. It helps protect recipients from malicious messages, such as spoofing and phishing. By setting up email authentication for your domain, you can ensure that your messages are less likely to be rejected or marked as spam by email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook.com. This is especially important when sending bulk email (large volume email), as it helps maintain the deliverability and reputation of your email campaigns. Please note that using Microsoft 365 to send bulk (mass) email is not a supported use of the service (more details below).
Microsoft 365 email senders may meet new difficulties in delivering emails to popular email service providers. For example, Google has implemented stricter security requirements to authenticate incoming email messages, particularly those sent in large volumes, as announced on the Google blog, Gmail introduces new requirements to fight spam. They are configured to reject messages that don't meet email authentication standards. Yahoo also started enforcing similar sending standards and requirements as mentioned in Sender Best Practices Sender Hub (yahooinc.com). These issues usually manifest in the form of Non-Delivery Reports (NDR) such as:
Email authentication verifies that email messages from a sender (for example, la...@contoso.com) are legitimate and come from expected sources for that email domain. You can improve your email deliverability by authenticating email you send with SPF, DKIM and DMARC. These Domain Name Service (DNS) email authentication records verify that you are the legitimate sender of your email and prevent spoofing and phishing attacks.
If an email that your organization sends does not meet email authentication standards for your recipient email service provider, or if it is seen as unsolicited bulk email, it may be rejected or marked as spam. The non-delivery reports (NDRs) from each provider include details and best practices on how to deliver email to them. Microsoft 365 is not to be used for bulk email relay, but in case the receiving email providers perceive your email as such, refer to their respective documentation.
EOP has strict outbound spam controls that can block or segregate your email to a special high-risk delivery pool if it exceeds sending limits. Using Microsoft 365 to send bulk (mass) email is not a supported use of the service.
As a reminder, our enterprise customers can now choose how to handle inbound emails that fail DMARC validation and choose different actions based on the policy set by the domain owner, such as p=reject or p=quarantine.
Moreover, you do not need to distribute your email volume manually; the Sender Rotation feature by Saleshandy automatically switches your multiple email addresses in a single sequence.
Saleshandy has partnered with TrulyInbox, an email warm-up tool that interacts with your inbox and works on a human-like email-sending and interaction mechanism to build your sender reputation.
Important Note: You should always USE GOOGLE WORKSPACE ACCOUNTS for bulk email outreach. Free Gmail accounts are more likely to be marked as spam as soon as you start sending emails in bulk.
You should check the open and reply rates and deals closed. However, Gmail lacks built-in tracking abilities to monitor the performance of your mass email campaigns, so you need to rely on a third-party tool.
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