New Gmail and Yahoo Spam Prevention Requirements and How Email Marketers Can Prepare

Ending up in the spam folder is every marketer’s nightmare. Not only does it mean your message didn’t make it to your recipient, but it could set you up for failure later on. The more your emails get marked as spam, the worse your email deliverability can get over time. Also, being seen as a spammer isn’t great for your brand, as it corrodes your credibility and breaks down any trust you’ve worked hard to earn with your audience.

Major email providers, like Gmail and Yahoo, know just how annoying it is for users to receive spammy messages. That’s why they’ve adjusted their screening policies and are being more stringent with their rules. 

But what does this mean for email marketers? This new policy will go into effect in early 2024, so it’s crucial that you’re prepared and aware of how this will affect whether or not your emails make it to inboxes. Let’s dive into these new spam screening policies Google and Yahoo are implementing so you can avoid being flagged as spam.

Google and Yahoo’s Spam Filtering Policies

Google and Yahoo’s new spam filtering policies require that email marketers do the following:  

• Set up domain verification
• Make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe from your emails
• Keep your complaint reporting below 0.3% 

Email senders who do not comply with the terms of the policy are more likely to have their emails rejected or classified as spam.

Gmail will instill these new policies in February 2024, and Yahoo! Mail will instill them by the first quarter of 2024. 

The good news is that these policies have long been recommended as general email marketing best practices so, if you’ve been following these guidelines all along, good for you! You’re one step ahead on improving your overall reach and ensuring your emails stay in the inbox. 

However, if you’re not sure you’ve been following these practices, don’t stress. We’ll walk you through how to ensure you’re operating in line with these new policies. 

Step-By-Step Guide to Following Gmail and Yahoo’s New Spam Prevention Requirements

1. Set Up Domain Authentication

One of the most famous types of spam is a spoofed email. A spoofed email is an email message that has been altered or falsified to misrepresent the sender’s identity. In a spoofed email, the sender’s information, including the “From” address, is manipulated to make it appear as though the email comes from a different source than it actually does. The intent behind spoofing can vary, but it is often used for malicious or deceptive purposes, and “domain authentication” is an electronic certificate that indicates that the sender’s address is not a spoof.

If you are sending emails from another company’s server, for example, by using an email delivery system, a situation may occur where the server that actually delivers the emails and the domain server of the sender address is different. 

At this time, the receiving server determines whether the source address is genuine by referring to a digital certificate such as SPF or DKIM. 

Setting up this digital certificate, or “domain authentication,” is strongly encouraged. It’s also important to note that using a free domain and sending from a third-party provider will no longer be allowed since they can’t authenticate. There are inexpensive domain registrars you can use, such as:

Note to Benchmark Email Customers: We will not be allowing users to use a free domain moving forward, so make sure you set up your own domain with a domain authentication.

2. Make it Easy to Unsubscribe

For recipients who want to unsubscribe, email marketers should enable a “one-click unsubscribe” option that unenrolls the recipient from your email marketing outreach within two days.

This rule is limited in Gmail to “email subscribers who send more than 5,000 emails a day to their Gmail account.”  However, Yahoo! Mail does not restrict.

3. Keep the Complaint Reporting Rate Below 0.3%

If email recipients have an issue with an email they’ve received, they can report complaints to Google or Yahoo and have email from that particular sender blocked.

Some common reasons recipients issue complaints are: 

• They’ve received an unsolicited email.
• They are frustrated by receiving a newsletter they are no longer engaged with.
• They don’t know how to unsubscribe, or they find it complicated.

Email senders should maintain a complaint reporting rate that’s less than 0.3% in order to stay aligned with these new policies. The best way to do this is to only send emails to recipients who have opted into your email marketing. We also recommend that you refrain from sending emails to those who have not opened your emails in a long time. Luckily, with Benchmark Email’s Smart Sending feature, we assist with this process by eliminating unengaged email addresses from your list. You can add these emails back later with a re-engagement campaign. 

Lastly, make sure you place the unsubscribe link in a location where recipients can easily find it.

If you are using Gmail, you can check your own spam report rate with Postmaster Tools, so if you have a problem, take the above measures.

In recent years, Google and Yahoo have made great efforts to automatically detect spam emails, and their algorithms for this purpose are evolving daily. This policy formulation may be a request for cooperation from us email marketers for precise spam detection.

It is a good thing for email marketers who are operating correctly with best practices because it means that subscribers will no longer receive spam, and it will be easier for them to find your email, promotion or newsletter in their inboxes.

Use this opportunity to deepen engagement with your subscribers!

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by Benchmark Team

Occassionally, the worldwide Benchmark Email team will collaborate on a post to deliver the lastest and greatest news, tips and feature updates to all of you.