PSA : Google & Yahoo’s New Rules for Marketing Emails
As a small business owner, your e-mail list is the single most important avenue to connect and engage with your community. Plus, e-mail lists drive greater conversion than social channels or organic search, without question. We use e-mail practically all day, everyday. But, who the hell knows how e-mail works??? I sure as sh!t don’t. But, this week I’ve gotten an education from the folks at Klaviyo because on February 1, 2024, our e-mail lists have new hurdles to climb in order to avoid the dreaded Spam folder.
Google and Yahoo have put in place new requirements on bulk e-mail senders to crack down on e-mail fraud. And, there is a feeling that this is the first of a few steps that will probably be taken by the likes of these and other e-mail giants.
“We use e-mail practically all day, everyday. But, who the hell knows how e-mail works???”
Yewande, Owner + Principal Developer
By not acting on the steps below, your deliverability (whether your e-mails are received or opened) may take a hit especially with subscribers who have an e-mail address with Google or Yahoo, which is a big chunk of the pie… so this is not to be taken lightly.
1. If you are sending bulk e-mails from an e-mail account ending in @gmail.com or @yahoo.com, then after February 1, your e-mails will likely be marked as Spam. Google and Yahoo now expect bulk e-mail sends to come from a branded domain. For example, you received this e-mail from my branded domain @shadownut.com.
So, if you have not purchased a domain, you should do it now. Squarespace, GoDaddy, etc. all sell domains. Mine costs $12 per year so they can be really cheap. Once purchased, connect your branded domain to any service who sends e-mails on your behalf. For me, that would include Google Workspace (for regular, degular e-mails), Calendly (for booking meetings), Klaviyo (for e-mail marketing), and Squarespace (for transactional e-mails).
Again, if your systems are still sending from your @gmail.com or @yahoo.com e-mail address after February 1, there is a chance those e-mails will be marked as Spam.
2. On your branded domain, you must add a DMARC record. Now, this is where I got all confused but it was SUPER EASY, once I got a little education. Basically, a DMARC record tells the recipient’s server what to do if someone has hijacked your domain. As I mentioned earlier, I have given permission to Google Workspace, Calendly, Klaviyo, and Squarespace to send e-mails on my behalf. To do that, I had to add a custom record on my domain. If someone outside of the providers listed above send an e-mail using @shadownut.com, then the DMARC record tells the server what to do with that e-mail (nothing, quarantine, or reject).
You only need to do this once with whomever you purchased your domain from. I purchased my domain from Google Domains, so my DMARC record looks like this…
The e-mail address you include in your DMARC record will receive a daily report from any servers that receive e-mails from your domain. If you are sending hundreds or thousands of e-mails out you may want to add a rule to your inbox to put all those e-mails in a specific folder. You can check periodically what is in those daily reports to see if any suspicious activity has taken place or hire a third party service to do that for you.
3. You must have a one-click Unsubscribe link in your e-mail header. Thankfully, Klaviyo will be taking care of this for me and all their account holders. I suspect the other big apps like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, etc. are already or will do the same.
It is also best practice that you include an nsubscribe link in the footer of your marketing e-mails.
So, those are the top 3 things to note in regards to avoiding your e-mails from being marked as Spam come February 1. I know this can be hella intimidating for some and I am happy to help (to the best of my ability). Feel free to reach out if you need any assistance. For more information, here are some resources…
For Klaviyo users
How to meet Google and Yahoo’s email sender requirements in 2024 →
For Squarespace users
Setting up sender details →
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