In the on-going battle against spam, Google and Yahoo have announced new standards for 2024 that will help protect their inboxes and curtail spam intrusions. This is great news for legitimate email senders who abide by email best practices as we expect other Inbox Providers and email services to follow their lead. However, your business may need to adapt to these new standards or risk missing the Inbox.
Google and Yahoo to Require SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
For Google, if your business sends more than 5,000 messages to Gmail addresses, you must adopt SPF, DKIM, and DMARC by February 2024. Yahoo will apply the same trio of requirements to “bulk senders” in the first quarter of 2024, though they have not defined what constitutes a bulk sender.
The new email requirements include both SPF and DKIM records for authenticating email-sending domains, a DMARC record for the domain, and a “From” header that matches either the SPF or DMARC record, known as “alignment.” In addition, marketers must keep spam rates below 0.3% and provide the ability to unsubscribe with a single click if the recipient chooses.
What does this mean for your business?
Google’s and Yahoo’s requirements are a critical move to reinforce your company’s email best practices. With the two largest email providers taking major steps to secure inboxes, more Inbox Providers will adopt similar DMARC policies in the future. Getting prepared will be key.
If your company has already enabled SPF, DKIM and DMARC, you get a boost. Your messages will have to compete with fewer poorly configured emails or spam messages. Your email has protection against impersonation through better authentication and, with DMARC, you are able to see SPF and DKIM configuration issues that would put your email delivery at risk and detect spammers attempting to use your domain for fraud of phishing. If you have not configured SPF, DKIM and DMARC, you have a short window to get prepared. Regardless of your SPF, DKIM and DMARC configuration, however, the requirement to maintain a low rate of being marked as “spam” could really hurt you if you are purchasing email lists.
How Can MxToolbox Help?
With these upcoming changes to Google and Yahoo, now is the perfect time to use our various tools and products to improve your email deliverability!
Since DMARC will soon be a requirement for those providers, MxToolbox Delivery Center will help your sending domain achieve the best possible email delivery rates, including managing your DMARC setup. In addition, our Inbox Placement feature will tell you if your campaigns are being sent to the Spam/Junk folders or actually making it to inboxes, as well as which Inbox Provider(s) you are having trouble sending to.
MxToolbox is the Expert on email delivery. We offer a wide range of free and subscribed options, so be proactive now and take advantage of them before these new 2024 guidelines are applied to your outgoing newsletters and marketing campaigns.