Email Marketing: Adapting safely to the new Gmail / Yahoo requirements

News

2 Jan 2024 • Written by Pierre Tâm-Anh Le Khac

Starting February 1, 2024, Gmail and Yahoo will enforce new requirements for email senders, particularly those considered as “bulk senders”.

Batch email customers shouldn’t worry too much about this new spam policy, that fights against industrialised cold outreach & email list rental. In our B2C first-party data ecosystem, all the emails we send are to our clients' users, not prospects, who had to opt-in to receive these emails.

Still, to keep your deliverability in the highest levels, we have to make sure you properly nurture and maintain your email database.

The good news is that Batch's email philosophy and functional capabilities are fully aligned with these new Gmail and Yahoo requirements. Working every day with large companies who are very concerned about privacy and marketing pressures helps us to maintain high standards in these areas.

Here's a detailed overview of what's changing and how to easily comply with the requirements, with the help of Batch.

Who is impacted?

These mandates primarily affect bulk senders of commercial email to prospects. However, all senders, including the Batch email clients, especially those who regularly communicate with Gmail or Yahoo! users, should aim to comply in order to maintain a good sender reputation and ensure email deliverability.

When will these requirements be enforced?

The new requirements will come into effect on February 1, 2024. It's advisable for senders to start complying with these guidelines as soon as possible to ensure smooth email delivery.

What’s changing, and what to do?

1. Email Domain Authentication

What's changing: Bulk senders, who send over 5,000 emails per day to Gmail and Yahoo addresses, need to authenticate their emails using established protocols SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance). This is crucial for verifying sender identity and minimising email spoofing risks.

What to do: Implement authentication protocols mentioned: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Good news: Batch has been doing this with email clients since day one. If you are using Batch emails, you can read this Batch Help article: How can I set up an email sending domain on Batch.

2. Easy Unsubscription Process

What's changing: Gmail and Yahoo mandate a clearly visible, one-click unsubscribe option in marketing emails, surpassing most of the GDPR/EU ePrivacy directives and the French CNIL requirements.

What to do: Ensure all marketing emails include this feature and process unsubscribe requests within two days.

Note for the Batch email customers: we add a list-unsub to all your marketing emails for our clients, as asked by the guidelines, you don't have to do anything. There are benefits using it:

Facilitating your email subscribers’ experience: this is one of the most user-friendly ways to present a one-click unsubscribe option in marketing emails.
Protecting your email delivery: using this way to ease the unsubscription process enables you not to be marked as spam, maintaining your email sender reputation and delivery.

Reminder: the difference between List-unsub and Link unsub:

List-unsub: This is a header in the email that provides an easy way for recipients to unsubscribe. Email clients may use this header to present a one-click unsubscribe button. It's more user-friendly and is considered a best practice for email marketers.

Link unsub: This method involves providing an unsubscribe link within the email content, usually found at the bottom. The recipient must click this link and sometimes follow additional steps - such as a web page - to complete the unsubscribe process. This is not the case on Batch, where the user is registered as unsubscribed as soon as they clicked on the link. For more information, we invite you to read this Batch Help article: How to add an unsubscribe link to your email template.

3. Maintaining Low Spam Complaint Rates

What's changing: Senders must keep spam complaint rates below 0.3%. This rate is determined by the number of recipients who report your message as spam compared to the total number of emails delivered. Monitoring and maintaining a low spam rate is crucial for email deliverability.

What to do: On Gmail's Postmaster Tools, monitor the spam complaint rate, and keep it below the specified threshold.

All Batch email customers are well above the 5k emails/day threshold and the customer, with an average spam complaint rate is at 0.06% (= 5x below the 0.3% limit mentioned by Gmail).

We also add each spam complaint to a suppression list to ensure that these addresses cannot be targeted in the future. This helps to clean up our clients' old email lists as they start to warm up on the Batch Email Deliverability engine (our clients who recently did this went from 0.05% to <0.01% spam complaint rate).