Gmail & Yahoo Email Guideline Changes – How Email Marketers Need to Adapt Their Email Send Practices 

Background 

The email marketing world is changing again, and the experts from CMI’s Health Minute team have been gathering the information to keep you up to date on the latest changes.  

Gmail and Yahoo have always been on the forefront of email filtering. Google is already known for having one of the strictest spam filters in the industry when it comes to inbox placement. And as of February 2024, these 2 providers have tightened their guidelines to further deter spam and unwanted email from reaching recipient’s inboxes. This impacts email marketers as it will further emphasize proper email sending practices to ensure emails are reaching the primary inbox of their intended users. 

These requirements are intended for bulk senders who send more than 5,000 emails to Gmail accounts each day. However, email marketers who do not reach this threshold will still be subject to the same guidelines. Failure to follow these guidelines will result in emails being sent to the spam folder or even outright rejected by Google and Yahoo.  

The requirements include: 

• 100% Authentication 

• SPF – Prevents spammers from sending unauthorized emails from your domains 
• DKIM – verifies to the email provider the domain belongs to the sender 
• DMARC – Tells the email provider what to do with the message if it fails SPF and DKIM verification. Options include to allow the message to be sent, quarantined, or completely rejected (reject is recommended, but any of these options are acceptable if DMARC is configured) 
• IP Addresses should have valid reverse and forward lookup DNS records 

• Not sending unwanted or unsolicited email by keeping spam complaint rate under 0.3% daily 
• Making it easier to unsubscribe, ideally using one-click opt-out links 

It is crucial that you have proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in place so that your emails pass authentication every time. If you are unsure on how to check if these are properly implemented, you can check sites such as MXToolBox, enter your domain and it will tell you what you have implemented and what is missing. Your ESP or CRM platform should also be offering technical support to help with these implementations as well. 

Impact 

The updates to these sender guidelines will make it more challenging for email marketers to reach their audience that uses Gmail or Yahoo accounts if they are not following best practices. Senders who are following these requirements will not see much impact initially but will need to continuously monitor to make sure it stays that way. 

Failure to adhere to these strict guidelines could result in less emails successfully delivering, or emails getting sent to spam folders. This means less of your intended audience will see your message, which results in less engagement and damages your email reputation.  

Recommendations 

As a result of these updates, the below actions are recommended to ensure successful delivery of email: 

Sign up for Google Postmaster and Yahoo Feedback Loops to monitor spam complaints: Both tools are free and will help email marketers keep track of their spam rates. Google Postmaster will give you detailed insights into daily delivery errors, IP and Domain Reputation, Authentication rates, and most importantly the spam complaint rates which is where you will see if you are below 0.3% threshold or not. The Yahoo feedback loop will send spam complaints to a designated mailbox. These feedback loops may even be able to integrate to your ESP or CRM so that those users can be automatically removed. 

Keep an eye on your email domain reputation: Your email domain’s reputation is the key to knowing how successful your email deliveries will be. Continuously check blacklist monitors to make sure you are not blacklisted. MXToolBox has a blacklist checker that will run the most common lists. You can also lookup your sending IP Address’ Sender Score. It is ideal to keep this score in the 80-100 range. 

Hygiene your email lists: You should be consistently cleaning your email lists to ensure you are not emailing inactive or bad email addresses. You can identify these by either looking to see who has been inactive, or there are paid services available that can verify your list. These services can identify emails that will bounce, not deliver, or even determine if they have become a spam trap. Spam traps are inactive emails that previously may have been active, but after becoming inactive, are used by the internet providers to see if email marketers are actively cleaning out inactive email addresses. These should be avoided as often as possible. 

Further emphasize omnichannel: Continue to strategize marketing efforts that are not dependent on one tactic. Multiple touchpoints and leveraging next-best actions based on previous engagements is key to ensuring you are reaching your audience, regardless of the specific tactic involved.  

Conclusion 

The need to always be aware of your email sending practices has been amplified by these updated requirements from Google and Yahoo. These guidelines are best practices that should be consistently followed. If not, this is a wonderful time to take a step back and re-evaluate your email marketing to ensure you can continue to reach your intended audience and get the best engagement possible, especially from recipients who love your content and messages. It is only a matter of time before other internet providers such as Microsoft (Outlook/Hotmail) follow suit.  

Health Minute™, CMI Media Group’s proprietary email service, is optimized for omnichannel and next-best-action campaigns to provide scalability and cost-efficiency in email delivery for reaching target audiences. Health Minute’s email service model allows for flexibility in both deployment and pricing, with seamless integration into omnichannel marketing programs such as PROACT™ and client triggered campaigns. Health Minute can also work for event-based email, ad hoc deployments, and automated decisioning programs. The flexibility Health Minute provides yields improved email performance for all communication needs. To explore Health Minute for your brand, please contact Matt Strehlau and Jordan McDowell.