How to prepare for Google +Yahoo new email sender requirements, including DMARC set up

By now, you’ve probably heard about Google and Yahoo’s new sender requirements. And they may be making you sweat. But take a deep breath—we’ve got good news.

The changes you need to make are good for your customers, good for your deliverability score, and chances are, you’re already doing most of it. Here, we’ll walk you through the steps you need to take.

Shane McElroy, product manager at Klaviyo, emphatically agrees: “The upcoming requirements have long been recommended by inbox providers as best practices. By moving from recommendation to enforcement, Google and Yahoo are making it clear that proper authentication is essential for email marketing success.”

“Meeting these requirements will make it easier for inbox providers to identify you as a legitimate sender, which in turn will make it easier than ever for you to reach your subscribers,” he continues.

Quick note: Because Google’s requirements are stricter—once you meet those, you’ll also meet Yahoo’s—we’ll walk you through Google’s in this article.

Who needs to make changes? Everyone—especially bulk senders

Google has a new set of requirements for all senders, and some extras for bulk senders—those who send 5k or more emails to Google accounts per day.

If you’re not sure if you meet that 5k threshold, here are some guidelines:

• Google will include personal accounts ending in @gmail.com and @googlemail.com.
• All traffic from a given sender will count towards that 5k threshold, including transactional emails.

So, you may be closer to that 5k threshold—and qualifying as a bulk sender—than you realise.

Now, let’s take a look at what the changes are and what you can do to prepare.

3 big new requirements to plan for

There are 3 main requirements that you’ll need to satisfy if you meet the bulk sender threshold:

1. Set up DMARC authentication for your sending domain

This new requirement is a great one to get ahead of (but, to re-emphasise, not before Black Friday is behind you).

You can set up DMARC authentication for your sending domain in your DNS provider yourself, and you can take care of it at any time. Your DMARC enforcement policy can be set to none, and Google has some specific guidelines to set your brand up for success.

Keep an eye out for a tutorial (coming soon!) from Klaviyo Academy.

Lauren Del Vecchio, manager of global email deliverability at Klaviyo, shares a tip on DMARC: “Configuring DMARC p=none is a great first step to analyse mail streams using your domain and working towards DMARC enforcement.”

2. Align your “From:” header with your domain

If you’re a bulk sender, you need your own sending domain—you can no longer use a shared domain. And the domain in your friendly “From:” header (what your subscribers see in their inbox) has to align with your sending domain in order to be compliant with DMARC alignment.

If your account is making use of an info@domain.com “From” address, it’s already aligned with a send.domain.com dedicated sending domain. So, you don’t need to update your “From: address” to something like info@send.domain.com.

This goes for both marketing and transactional emails.

Note: While you won’t be able to use a shared domain, you don’t need a dedicated IP—using a shared one is still OK.

For a deeper understanding, visit Klaviyo Academy’s action plan for meeting the requirement.

3. Make unsubscribing easier and clearer

This requirement is actually two:

1. Your marketing emails must include a method to unsubscribe in just one step.
2. There must also be an unsubscribe link in the message body—but that link does not have to be one click to unsubscribe.

“If it’s difficult for your recipients to unsubscribe, they’re more likely to mark your emails as spam, which damages your deliverability reputation,” McElroy points out.

A clearly visible unsubscribe link and a short journey to no longer receive marketing messages are best practices. So, if you need to get compliant on this point, know that your deliverability score, sender reputation, and engagement with customers is likely to improve once you’ve got it in place.

Klaviyo will implement a “list unsubscribe header”—instructions to Gmail and Yahoo to provide an unsubscribe link at the top of the email—beginning before 1 February, 2024. This will satisfy the “one click to unsubscribe” requirement, automatically apply to all marketing emails built in Klaviyo, and brands won’t need to configure anything.

Requirements for all senders

If you send to Google email accounts at all—even if you don’t regularly send 5k messages or more a day—you’ll need to adhere to some new requirements.

Keep your spam rates low

You probably try to keep your spam complaints as low as possible already—now you’ll need to keep them under 0.30%. You can use Google’s Postmaster Tools to monitor your spam complaint rates.

“Keeping spam complaints low has always been a deliverability best practice. This new requirement gives senders crystal clear guidelines and the tools you need to take full control over your sending reputation,” shares Del Vecchio.

Don’t impersonate Gmail “From:” headers

This one should only impact you if you’re an entrepreneur just getting started. If you don’t yet have your own domain and you use gmail.com or googlemail.com in your friendly “From:” address, your email will end up in the spam folder.

So, if you’re thinking of getting your own domain, it’s worth investing in one before 1 February, 2024.

Del Vecchio sees this requirement as 100% positive:

“Ultimately,” she says, “this is a great chance to build your brand’s reputation with inbox providers and recognition with your customers.”

Are there any other new requirements?

There are a handful of new requirements that, if you’re using Klaviyo, you don’t need to worry about at all, as we’ve already taken care of them for you.

Those are:

• Setting up SPF and DKIM email authentication for your domain
• Ensuring that your sending domain and IP has valid forward and reverse DNS records
• Formatting messages according to the Internet Messaging Format standard