Navigating Google’s and Yahoo’s New Sender Requirements: What Email Marketers Need to Know

Pavel
4 min read

The email marketing world is evolving, and we’re here to help you through these pivotal changes. Yahoo’s and Google’s new sender guidelines, effective from February 2024, mandate specific actions for all senders sending to mailboxes hosted by Google and Yahoo. These changes are not just for compliance but are steps towards more effective, trusted email marketing.

What is going to change?

While these changes were previously considered best practices, starting February 1st, they are becoming requirements:

  1. Stop using shared 3rd-party email address domains @gmail.com and @yahoo.com as your “From” email address for your marketing campaigns, and instead use your site’s branded domain.
  2. Help mailbox providers verify it is actually you sending your emails, and not someone trying to impersonate you, by setting up DKIM authentication and publishing a DMARC policy for the “From” email address sender domain.
  3. Only send solicited and desirable emails your contacts want to receive;
  4. Maintain a low spam report rate of under 0.1% (that’s fewer than 1 spam report per 1,000 emails), and never exceed more than 0.3% (3 spam reports per 1,000 emails).

There are several other requirements that MailPoet will automatically help you with, so you don’t have to worry about them:

  1. Align the “From” sender domain with the DKIM signature domain. MailPoet will do this automatically when you add your domain as a Sender Domain.
  2. Make it easy to unsubscribe. MailPoet will automatically help you with that by offering a One-Click Unsubscribe to your contacts.
  3. Set up forward and reverse DNS records for sending IP addresses.
  4. Use TLS encryption to securely transmit email.
  5. Format messages following the RFC 5322 format.

Here’s How You Can Adapt

For most senders, there are three changes you need to make: Setting up a sender domain, use an email address that utilizes this domain, and setting up DMARC authentication. As a MailPoet user, you may already have performed the first two steps.

Please Update to the Latest MailPoet Version

The latest version of the MailPoet plugin includes tools to help you make the necessary changes, so we recommend you update your site to the latest version of MailPoet first.

  1. Stop sending marketing campaigns from @gmail.com and @yahoo.com addresses: if you’re using MailPoet to send emails from a 3rd-party email domain you do not own (e.g. @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, or others), you’ll need to update and change your MailPoet campaigns to send from an email address on your site’s branded domain instead (e.g. name@businessname.com). Not only does this make your campaigns look more professional and more recognizable to your customers, but it will also help your campaigns reach your contacts’ inboxes. 
  2. Set up your Sender Domain: this will enable MailPoet to authenticate your emails with DKIM, and help mailbox providers verify that emails MailPoet delivers on your behalf are actually sent by you. This crucial step ensures your emails are seen as legitimate and improves deliverability. Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to set up your Sender Domain.
  3. Set up DMARC Authentication with at least a neutral policy: DMARC is a DNS record that helps prevent email impersonation and thus improves the trustworthiness of your emails. Our easy-to-follow tutorials in our knowledge base make setting up DMARC a breeze, ensuring your emails are authenticated and delivered reliably.
  4. Send to users who want your newsletters: How can you improve your opening rates and minimize your spam complaints? MailPoet has two popular features you can utilize. Our “Inactive Subscribers Feature” allows you to exclude subscribers who do not interact with your newsletters and are no longer interested in your content. You can also set up segments for your subscribers to only send to new subscribers and your engaged subscribers. This ensures that you send your newsletters only to users who are interested in your content. You can learn more about our Segmentation feature in our Knowledge Base.

Why should you make these changes?

These steps are essential for maintaining your email marketing efforts’ effectiveness and trustworthiness. They’re not just about following new rules but about evolving with the digital landscape to ensure your emails reach your audience successfully. It’s crucial to understand the implications of not adapting to these new guidelines. Non-compliance could result in:

  • Decreased email delivery rates: Your emails might start landing in the spam folder or may not be delivered at all, significantly diminishing your reach and impact.
  • Damaged sender reputation: Non-compliance can harm your sender reputation, making it harder for your emails to reach your audience in the future, even beyond Google and Yahoo recipients.
  • Potential email blockage: In severe cases, repeated non-compliance might lead to your emails being blocked by major email service providers.
  • MailPoet may limit your campaigns: in some circumstances MailPoet may require you to set up a Sender Domain for your branded domain to continue sending bulk marketing campaigns.

Common questions and answers

I am not a bulk sender and send very few emails. Do I still need to take action to authenticate my domain?

Yes, to ensure that your email campaigns still reach your audience, it’s still a good idea to take action to authenticate your domain if you have not done so yet.

The email industry is trending towards requiring authentication for all senders with the stance of “no authentication – no entry” becoming increasingly popular, and now that the biggest mailbox providers like Google and Yahoo have instated these requirements – we can expect the rest of the industry to follow. You taking action now means that you will be safely ready for the upcoming future, and you wouldn’t want to be caught by a silent surprise later as your business grows.

To help future-proof your campaigns, MailPoet will ask all users to ensure your Sender Domains are authenticated by February 1st, and may limit sending bulk campaigns that use unauthenticated Sender Domains in some circumstances after February 1st.

Further Reading

If you are interested in the ins and outs of this topic, we have compiled a small reading list for you: