Is your business ready for the latest changes affecting bulk email sending?
In February 2024, Google and Yahoo will be enforcing new sender requirements for any bulk emails in excess of 5,000 individual email addresses in a given day.
What it covers
The update can be considered in 3 parts:
- 1) Email Authentication
- Additional methods of verifying where emails originate from – email marketing providers should be prompting you to add DKIM, SPF and the new DMARC records.
- 2) Ease of unsubscribing
- Best practice to make it easy for individuals to opt-out from your emails.
- 3) Relevance
- Thresholds for emails marked as span; if crossed it could mean your domain emails (including standard corporate emails) could be affected.
Why now?
As, no doubt, your own inbox could testify; spam emails are still a big problem. With phishing and spoof emails on the rise, the big players are coming together to help combat the issue.
DNS settings – is your domain ready?
Google refers to these settings as ‘basic hygiene for email’ – to learn more about the individual settings required you can read their full article or checkout their Email sender guidelines (warning: contains technical information). If you actively use email marketing software such as Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor you may have been prompted to update these settings already.
Typically your internal IT, external IT provider or web agency would be the best placed to advise you on your businesses readiness. At Blumin we proactively monitor and take action of such changes on behalf of our clients.
Managing Unsubscribers
Whilst ensuring your unsubscribe process is obviously sign-posted from each and every email you send you may also want to consider a two-step unsubscribe process to protect your mailing lists from any bot and/or automated activity.
