Staying compliant with email server requirements is the best way to ensure that your carefully crafted message makes it into the inbox of your recipients. Google and Yahoo have announced that, beginning in February 2024, they plan to enforce stricter sending requirements for senders with higher than 5,000 emails a day. If this applies to your organization, read on to learn how to stop your emails winding up in the spam folder.

The requirements from Google and Yahoo are as follows:

1. Senders must authenticate all emails using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. This helps verify that emails come from the sender and not a spammer.
2. Unsubscribe links and one-click unsubscribe options will be mandatory. This gives candidates an easy way to opt out of future emails.
3. Spam rate thresholds will be enforced. If the sender consistently sends emails with a high spam rate, their messages will be rejected or sent to the spam folder.

• Gmail: Maximum spam complaint rate of 0.3%
• Yahoo: Maximum spam complaint rate of 0.3%

An email sender who does not implement Gmail and Yahoo’s requirements may see a potential impact in its email performance on either platform, including increases in bounce rates that result in delayed or non-delivery of emails, or emails being sent to the designated bulk (spam) folder.

What are we doing to prevent this?

Currently Beamery ensures all of our clients' emails are setup using SPF, DKIM and DMARC configuration. 

Beamery is also changing the way unsubscribes work for campaigns sent. Currently, Beamery unsubscribe links are two-click for candidates. What this means is that candidates will click unsubscribe in the body or footer of the email and then click unsubscribe. We’re changing this so candidates click unsubscribe in the body or footer of the email and are now instantly unsubscribed - thus making it a one-click unsubscribe.

What can you do to prevent this?

Follow best practices to insure the highest rates of inbox deliveries. 

• You should only send mass emails to contacts who have explicitly opted in within the past 12 months. Remove contacts from your segments who have not recently opted in. You can do this with a recipe. These older contacts account for most spam complaints.
• Ideally, you should not be sending to anyone who has not opted in or opened in the past 3 months.
• Do not use co-registration, 3rd party, or traded lists of any kind.
• Show an additional unsubscribe link in a prominent position. This helps push your contacts toward unsubscribing from your list instead of marking your message as spam. An unsubscribe will not hurt your deliverability (however a large amount of unsubscribes will), but a spam complaint will. It is much better to have someone unsubscribe than to have them flag your message as spam.
• Don't be easy to forget! Send a welcome message or a sequence of onboarding messages after a candidate has signed up so they are familiar with your brand's look and feel, and are aware of what you will be sending them. This way they won't be surprised when they get future messages from you and will be less likely to mark your emails as spam. If you wait days, weeks, or months before sending a message to a contact after they sign up, the chance that they will be marked as spam goes up.
• Make sure your emails come from the same domain where contacts signed up and make sure the email has the same exact branding. Also be sure the "From" name for your campaign aligns closely with the branding of the page where contacts signed up or opted in.
• Send relevant, personalized automation messages, not batch and blast campaigns to large lists. Segment your database so recipients get information that matters to them.