Posted on January 17th, 2024
Google and Yahoo have recently introduced new requirements for email senders, and these changes are set to impact how emails are delivered. If you want to ensure your emails reach recipients’ inboxes, pay attention to the following guidelines:
Why Google and Yahoo Are Changing the Rules
Properly authenticating your emails has always been a best practice, but not all senders have been diligent in using the available tools to protect their emails. This poses a significant problem: when senders fail to authenticate their emails, it becomes easy for bad actors to impersonate domains and send phishing messages. Such practices harm your sending reputation and undermine the efforts of Gmail and Yahoo to protect users from spam and unwanted emails.
As a result, Gmail and Yahoo have decided that proper email authentication and adherence to deliverability best practices are no longer optional. To ensure your emails continue to make it to the inbox, follow these key practices:
Authenticate Your Emails: Use DKIM, SPF, and DMARC to properly authenticate your emails. We’ll guide you on how to set this up.
Reduce Spam: Maintain a spam complaint rate under 0.3%. Keep an eye on your spam reports and take necessary actions.
Easy Unsubscribes: Allow recipients to unsubscribe with just one click, and honor unsubscribes within two days. If you’re using Postmark, we handle unsubscribes for Broadcast messages.
Compliance with Standards: Ensure RFC 5322 compliance, PTR records, and valid reverse DNS records for your sending server IP addresses. Postmark has you covered here.
Secure Transmission: Use a TLS connection for transmitting emails. Postmark supports opportunistic TLS for all outbound email, ensuring messages are encrypted in transit.
Who Is Affected?
While these changes primarily target large bulk senders, smaller senders and those who send transactional emails should also pay attention. If you send more than 5,000 daily emails to Google and Yahoo addresses, you must:
Authenticate your emails using security protocols like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC.
Implement one-click list-unsubscribe and honor unsubscribes within two days.
Maintain a spam complaint rate under 0.3% (no more than three spam reports for every 1,000 messages).
Remember, these changes matter for every email sender. By adhering to these requirements, you’ll not only protect your sending reputation but also contribute to a safer email ecosystem.
For more details, check out postmarkapp full blog post regarding this new requirement.
Feel free to share this information with your email team, and let’s keep our inboxes cleaner and more secure! 📧🔒
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