Do you know the new inbox verification by Google and Yahoo? Do you know it may affect the delivery of your emails? According to experts, Businesses may see a direct impact on their email delivery rates if they fail to authenticate their emails with the new DKIM and DMARC protocols.
Google and Yahoo in December announced this new authentication method to protect customer’s inboxes from SPAM and brute force attacks. In an official joint press release, “Yahoogle” announced new bulk email sending requirements for bulk email senders.
In this article, we will be looking at Yahoogle’s (Gooogle & Yahoo; as they are jointly called) new email authentication policies and how to mitigate the impact of these new policies.
Summary: New requirements from Yahoo and Google
- Easy Unsubscription: Honouring unsubscribe requests from users instantly or in less than 2days.
- Lower Spam rates: Keep your spam rates less than 0.3%.
- DKIM & DMARC Authentications: All bulk senders
- Sending emails with custom domains: Bulk senders may not be able to send 5000 emails at a go.
Who is affected?
The new changes affect all bulk email senders with various ESPs (Email Sending Platforms). Also, senders using @gmail & @yahoo sender mails who send more than 5000 emails per day are considered bulk senders.
But as a rule of thumb, marketers or brands meeting this threshold or not need to make room for this change to be on the safer side, as long as you are not using Gmail or Ymail.
How to mitigate the impacts of these new changes
keeping your SPAM rates less than 0.3%
A higher SPAM rate in your email reports predicts something is wrong with your email. A higher spam rate means customers may not be interested in your brand, may have not subscribed to your service, or are finding it difficult to unsubscribe to your email.
While every ESP may have its threshold for SPAM, they all follow the general threshold of 0.3% set by Google and Yahoo. Having high spam complaints in your campaign may have a huge toll on your reputation as a brand or a marketer. You may get banned or pay higher fees if you do not adhere to Spam policies by these ESPs.
To check your spam rates, navigate to the campaign report dashboard, and check “Spam rate” or spam complaints in the campaign. Make sure to bring it down on your next campaign.
Honouring Unsubscribe requests
How do you handle unsubscribe requests? Do you make them fill out long and boring forms before finally removing them? hide unsubscribe links with a background color or just put a dead link behind the unsubscribe links so you keep sending them emails?
According to Google and Yahoo, these practices are a violation of their new unsubscribe policy. Unsubscribe requests should be honored instantly or within a period of 2days.
Also, Google & Yahoo are announcing a one-time unsubscribe infrastructure as a requirement for all outgoing emails. Once your ESP enables this feature, customers will unsubscribe at the subject line of the emails when unopened and at the From(sender) of the email when opened/read.
Start Sending emails with your Company’s custom Domain
Marketers and brands can be safe from Google and Yahoo penalties when they send emails with their custom domains, for example, @nalosolutions.com as compared to sending large emails with free domains like @aol.com, and @gmail.com.
This has never been a good practice since spammers use this method to masquerade authentic accounts and spoof users. Google is now making it a requirement for every bulk sender(5000 emails per day) to send with a custom domain that is DKIM, DMARC & SPF authenticated.
DKIM & DMARC Authentication
Whenever an email is sent, Google and Yahoo authenticate that the email is really from the original sender.
To make sure your email is genuine and from the original sender, Google and Yahoo are requiring marketers to authenticate sender emails with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Your ESP will guide you on how to authenticate your emails.
Conclusion
As brands following the best email practices means a lot to us. While all of these are normal best practices, Google and Yahoo are now enforcing them as requirements to protect customer’s inboxes.
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