Google announced last year that new spam ratios were being introduced in February of this year. Is your digital marketing team aware, and has it made the necessary adjustments?
In the announcement Google states:
Starting February 1, 2024, senders who send more than 5,000 messages per day to Gmail accounts must meet the requirements in this section.
- Set up SPF and DKIM email authentication for your domain.
- Ensure that sending domains or IPs have valid forward and reverse DNS records, also referred to as PTR records. Learn more
- Use a TLS connection for transmitting email. For steps to set up TLS in Google Workspace, visit Require a secure connection for email.
- Keep spam rates reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.10% and avoid ever reaching a spam rate of 0.30% or higher. Learn more about spam rates.
- Format messages according to the Internet Message Format standard (RFC 5322).
- Don’t impersonate Gmail From: headers. Gmail will begin using a DMARC quarantine enforcement policy, and impersonating Gmail From: headers might impact your email delivery.
- If you regularly forward email, including using mailing lists or inbound gateways, add ARC headers to outgoing email. ARC headers indicate the message was forwarded and identify you as the forwarder. Mailing list senders should also add a List-id: header, which specifies the mailing list, to outgoing messages.
- Set up DMARC email authentication for your sending domain. Your DMARC enforcement policy can be set to none. Learn more
- For direct mail, the domain in the sender’s From: header must be aligned with either the SPF domain or the DKIM domain. This is required to pass DMARC alignment.
- Marketing messages and subscribed messages must support one-click unsubscribe, and include a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the message body. Learn more
If you send more than 5,000 emails per day before February 1, 2024, follow the guidelines in this article as soon as possible. Meeting the sender requirements before the deadline may improve your email delivery. If you don’t meet the requirements described in this article, your email might not be delivered as expected, or might be marked as spam. To get help with email delivery issues, go to Troubleshooting.
To learn more about setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, visit Prevent spam, spoofing & phishing with Gmail authentication.
Simon Costain, General Manager of International Business Development at NextEd Group says “This change means a poorly executed email marketing strategy may seriously affect a business and their ability to send emails to Gmail and Yahoo accounts. It poses a serious risk to any business that operates mailing lists.
“A poorly planned campaign may trigger a higher than acceptable Spam rate and cripple business function, literally meaning you cannot send emails to your own clients and stakeholders. There has been no information published on how to fix getting banned if a breach of the Spam threshold has occurred.”
Colleges should review their email marketing strategy and look to minimise risk of high spam flag rates.
All colleges and compliance teams should have email marketing on their risk register as a potential risk that needs to be managed by a framework or approved protocol.
Simon suggests the following tips to reduce the risk of breaking the new Spam rate threshold:
- Limit your email sending to less than 5000 emails per day – stretch your mailing campaigns out over several days if possible
- Only send highly relevant, personalised emails – people will be less likely to treat you as Spam
- Invest in brand awareness so your database knows who you are
- Avoid sending cold emails to purchased databases at all costs
- Reduce the number of emails you send in general – only send emails that create value
- Clean your database regularly and remove old and non engaged leads
- Segment your lists in great detail so you can send highly relevant or timely content – don’t ever schedule generical email blasts
- Consider communication through other channels, and don’t solely rely on email
- Review how emails are sent by other teams such as admissions, alumni engagement etc… These are often sent as ‘marketing emails’ and carry the same risks.
- Add monitoring Spam rates (via postmaster tools or similar) part of your Marketing Teams’ KPIs
And of course, Ensure you have 1-click unsubscribe options and Ensure your technical requirements are met – have your IT team install DMARC, DKIM and SPF authentication.
Similar protocols are also being introduced by Yahoo.
