In early 2024, Gmail and Yahoo will enforce anti-spam rules that could impact your email marketing business. I'll describe the changes and what you must do.
New anti-spam rules
Both Gmail and Yahoo announced rules with the same objective in mind: to reduce the amount of spam their clients receive. There are many similarities in their approaches and a few differences.
| Gmail | Yahoo |
Start Enforcement | February 1, 2024 | First quarter of 2024 |
Bulk sender target | Parties sending 5000+ emails a day to @gmail.com and @googlemail.com addresses. | Parties sending 5000+ emails a day. Though not clear, likely covers messages to Yahoo and AOL accounts (e.g. yahoo.fr, yahoo.com, etc.). |
Authenticate with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC | ||
Allow for easy unsubscription | Yes. One-click unsubscribe. Process unsubscription requests within two days. | Yes. One-click unsubscribe. Process unsubscription requests within two days. |
Low spam rate | Below 0.3% | Below 0.3% |
Consequences
If you're a bulk sender (e.g. 5000+ emails/day) and you don't follow these rules, your messages will likely be marked as spam by the Inbox service provider or blocked altogether.
Are you impacted by the rules?
Not every email marketer is affected by these rules. You are not impacted if:
You use your own domain to send messages (e.g. [email protected]) instead of a general email service provider (like Gmail or Yahoo). And
You signed a DKIM.
If both conditions describe your email operations, then you are not impacted. You can stop reading this article.
How can I check my sender email?
Go to tinyAlbert.
Click the Account icon.
Click the Sender details tab.
In the screenshot below, the tinyAlbert user sends email messages from a personal domain (i.e. not a Gmail or Yahoo domain).
How can I check my DKIM in tinyAlbert?
Follow these steps to see if you have signed a DKIM with tinyAlbert. On the My account page, click the DKIM tab.
In the screenshot below, the user has a verified DKIM with tinyAlbert.
Complying with spam rules
If your daily send volume is over the red line (5000 messages/day to Google or Yahoo accounts) and you don't meet the two conditions described above (i.e. domain and DKIM), then you need to take action.
Complete these steps before February 1, 2024.
Change your sender email address. Send email from your brand domain (e.g. [email protected]) and not a generic email address like Gmail or Yahoo. (e.g. [email protected]). Learn how.
Sign a DKIM with tinyAlbert. Learn more.
Make sure your DMARC is properly set.
v=DMARC1
p=none
What if you can't make the changes?
I encourage you to complete all the steps mentioned above. They're not hard to do and don't require much time to complete.
If you can't meet the requirements by the deadline, we will do the following to ensure you can send emails.
These are temporary measures. We're doing you a solid until you make the changes yourself.
We will change your From sender to our system generated friendly sender so that it adheres to the rules.
We will set the Reply to address to your sender details. If someone replies to one of your emails, you will receive the message email.