Ready or Not, Here Come New Email Marketing Regulations

If email is part of your marketing strategy, you have likely heard that Google and Yahoo are implementing new sender requirements in February 2024. With spam rates reaching new highs, these privacy rules are meant to keep unsafe and unwanted emails from cluttering consumer’s inboxes.

To avoid deliverability issues and keep your emails from landing in the spam folder, it is important to familiarize yourself with these new requirements and make the necessary changes by the end of January 2024.

So, what are these new requirements?

Email Authentication

As a bulk sender, you will be required to strongly authenticate your email by leveraging industry standards such as sender policy framework (SPF), DomainKeys identified mail (DKIM), and domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance (DMARC). This will help to verify your identity as a sender so that recipients can confidently rely on an email’s source.

Easy Unsubscribe

Email recipients should be able to unsubscribe from your email in one click. Once a recipient has opted out of your email, this request must be honored within two days.

Spam Rates

To keep unwanted and unsolicited emails at bay, a new user-reported spam rate threshold of 0.3% will be enforced. In other words, if your spam rate exceeds 0.3%, your emails will no longer be delivered by Google or Yahoo.

What do I need to do?

We’ve included a compliance checklist below to help ensure that you meet Google and Yahoo’s new requirements.

Make it easy to unsubscribe

It is important that email recipients are able to unsubscribe from your email with a single click. Meeting this standard includes adding a specific one-click unsubscribe code in your email headers. Be sure to audit all of your campaign templates and flows to follow regulations. Learn More.

Remove opt-outs within 2 days

Once an email recipient has unsubscribed from your email, they must be removed from your email list within 2 days. Ensure that your email marketing platform and any connected tools or systems are configured to meet this standard.

Minimize spam complaints

There are a number of variables that can impact your spam complaint rate. In order to stay under the new 0.3% threshold, consider using a double opt-in, removing inactive subscribers, and tailoring your email content and frequency to unique segments. Learn More.

Set up a branded sending domain

This is important for branding as well as deliverability. Keep in mind that you cannot use a shared sending domain and must have a branded sending domain enabled by February 2024.

Align your “from” address

Make sure that your friendly “from” address is a website domain that you own. Do not use @gmail.com or @yahoo.com in the “from” address of your emails. The domain in your friendly “from” address must align with the root domain in your branded sending domain.

Authenticate your email

New protocols require you to set up SPF and DKIM and publish DMARC policies. Connect with your IT team to do this on your company’s Domain Name System (DNS). Learn More.

Set up valid PTR records

Ensure that sending domains or IPs have valid forward and reverse DNS records, also referred to as PTR records. Learn More.

If all of this sounds a bit overwhelming or if you currently have a spam rate that will negatively impact your deliverability, don’t worry – we are here to help! Reach out to us at digital@nuvoodoo.com.