PLEASE NOTE: This article aims to inform about the latest bulk email sending guidelines issued by Google and Yahoo. It should not be taken as legal counsel. We advise consulting with your legal team or compliance department to guarantee your email practices adhere to all relevant regulations.
Additionally, it is advisable to examine the original requirements set by Google and Yahoo.
In February 2024, Google and Yahoo will start rolling out new email sender rules to cut down on spam and make emails more secure. They will be specifically strict with organizations that are considered "bulk senders". Google will consider you a bulk sender if you send 5000 emails or more per day (important to note here is that this includes all emails – manual emails, internal emails, marketing emails etc. Meaning, most organizations will be considered a bulk sender). It is likely that other email services will start implementing similar guidelines in the near future.
Companies, including Zaplify customers must take action, to meet these new rules to keep their email sending in good standing. Note that Google's and Yahoo's new restrictions apply to all emails that all employees in your organization send. For that reason, the recommendation is to implement the new guidelines, not just in Zaplify, but in external email tools as well, eg. the CRM, Marketing tools and employees' Gmail.
Ready to take action? See our Bulk Sender Best Practices Checklist.
Please note however that our recommendation is to review the original guide by Google that this article is based on.
Ensuring Compliance With Bulk Email Sender Requirements
This article contains a summary of the 3 key areas to focus on in order to be seen as a legitimate sender: Authentication, Unsubscribe Links, and Spam Rate Threshold.
Authentication
Bulk senders must strongly authenticate their emails, ensuring that the sender's identity is verified, thereby closing security loopholes exploited by attackers. All email must be authenticated using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. For many organizations, these changes will need to be made or verified by your IT or Engineering department.
Check whether or not an SPF/DKIM/DMARC are set up correctly: If you have a user’s email, you can easily do this using the header information.
If DKIM does not pass: Please reference the below to fix depending on your email provider.
(Learn more about managing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC here.)
Unsubscribe Links
Bulk senders are required to offer Gmail and Yahoo recipients the ability to unsubscribe from commercial emails with a single click and must process unsubscribe requests within two days. Currently there are 2 different unsubscribe-link-requirements set out by Google:
One-click unsubscribe: This is implemented by Zaplify by default (read more here)
Adding an unsubscribe-link to the bottom of all emails: ACTION REQUIRED according to below.
Organization settings
The first area you’ll want to check is within your Settings under the Outreach settings tab. Turn on the switch to add an unsubscribe link to all emails across all your users campaigns.
Spam Rate Threshold
A clear spam rate threshold that senders must stay under to prevent users from receiving excessive unwanted messages will be enforced, setting an industry-first standard for spam control. Specifically, starting February 1, 2024, Google and Yahoo will automatically block all messages from bulk-sending organizations with a spam complaint rate of 0.3% or higher.
View and manage your organization’s sending reputation and abuse complaints via the providers’ dedicated tools:
Google: Google Postmaster
Yahoo: Y! Sender Hub
Recommended Action for B2B Senders: Personal Email Addresses
For our B2B Customers, we strongly recommend you audit your contact database to remove any personal email addresses associated with B2B customers (unless you’ve been directed by the user to use their personal Gmail) and do your best to replace them with corporate email addresses.
We also recommend adhering to Zaplify's Bulk Sender Best Practices Checklist and the rest of the guidance above. While Google’s specific regulations impact personal emails for now, we can’t be sure it will remain that way, so we recommend organizations adopt our best practices as soon as possible. More importantly, sending authenticated emails with personalized messaging improves the sending experience and can lead to improved performance outcomes.
Bulk Sender Best Practices Checklist
For organizations using workflows aligned to Zaplify deliverability best practices, we predict little to no impact to mailings as a result of these new policies. To ensure your organization is in compliance with these requirements, review the below checklist of our best practices for healthy deliverability.
| Best Practice | Notes | Resources |
☐ | Domain Authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) | All email must be authenticated using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. For many organizations, these changes will need to be made or verified by your IT or Engineering department. | Ensure SPF/DKIM/DMARC are set up correctly: If you have a user’s email, you can easily do this using the header information. If DKIM does not pass: Reference the below to fix depending on your email provider. |
☐ | Monitor Spam Rates | Mailing providers monitor a sender’s spam complaint rates as a way to identify potential abusive practices. Going forward, it is required that all senders keep spam complaint rates below 0.3% to avoid having their email treated as spam by the provider.
Ensuring all commercial emails have Unsubscribe Links (below) is also a great preventative step to minimize spam complaint rates. | Google gives visibility into an organization's spam complaint rates via Google Postmaster. Review your organization's current rates within Postmaster. Gmail recommends spam complaint rates stay below 0.3%.
If you send to a mix of Gmail recipients and recipients on other mailbox providers, the spam complaint rates reported by Gmail’s Postmaster Tools are a good indicator of an organization's spam complaint rates at mailbox providers who don’t let you view metrics. |
☐ | Enable Unsubscribe Links in your organization settings | Unsubscribe links are a mechanism for your prospects to tell you that they no longer wish to receive emails from you. Unsubscribe links also reduce the chances of a prospect marking an email as Spam. | |
☐ | Organization Level Email Limits and Throttles | Email limits determine how many emails Users can send from Zaplify each hour and day.
When limits are reached, the platform will automatically reschedule Zaplify emails to be sent the next available date and time. | For more info about the limits and guidance on changing them, please reach out to us at support@zaplify.com or using the the in-app chat-bubble. |
☐ | Organization-Level Bounce Rates | High bounce rates negatively impact deliverability. As a best practice, bounced emails should account for less than 5% of all outbound emails.
Google Workspace Admins can Google's Message delivery report in the Google Workspace Admin panel, to better understand their current volume of bounced emails. | Review your Google Workspace bounce rate using Google's email delivery report guide. |
☐ | Review Current Send Volumes | It’s important to ensure reps are created targeted lead lists and being strategic with their outbound prospecting motion. It is against best practice to send an excessive volume of bulk emails. | Review your org’s current outbound mailing volume using Google's email delivery report and review the current limit of emails being sent per day in Google. |
☐ | Audit Zaplify campaigns to remove personal Gmail accounts | Limit exposure to unnecessary spam complaints by auditing your campaigns and remove personal Gmail accounts. Ensure that you are sending to corporate emails for all B2B prospects and customers. | Maintain your data hygiene and campaign prospect lists (specifically if you upload your own csv-files into Zaplify or other tools). |