❗Attention email marketers: upcoming changes and guidelines from Google and Yahoo. ❗
The email marketing landscape is constantly evolving, and it's crucial to stay compliant to ensure your messages reach your audience's inboxes.
Note: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (FKA Pardot) users refer to this post.
VIDEO: New Year, New Email Deliverability Rules: Improve Your Email Sender Score
Here are some recent announcements from major mailbox providers Gmail and Yahoo, along with our recommendations to position you and your company for long-term success in your email campaigns:
In this post we'll be covering
1. Gmail Inactive Account Policy Change
2. Sender Domain Authentication
3. One-Click Unsubscribe
4. Maintaining less than 0.3% spam output
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⭐ Gmail Inactive Account Policy Change ⭐
Gmail announced per their Inactive Google Account Policy stating in December 2023, Gmail will begin proactively disabling and deleting accounts inactive for two years.
What does this mean? Messages sent to inboxes of deleted accounts will soon hard bounce. This will lead to increased bounce rates and this will negatively impact your sender reputation.
Our suggestion: proactively remove or unsubscribe unengaged subscribers to improve ROI and focus on highly-engaged subscribers who are more likely to convert.
Read our articles:
- Marketing Cloud - Inactive Google Account Policy Update
- Manage inactive accounts in Marketing Cloud Engagement
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⭐ Sender Domain Authentication⭐
Joint statements by Gmail and Yahoo emphasize the importance of domain authentication for security and user protection of their users.
What does this mean? It is possible that some customers may be sending from domains that are not authenticated for use on our platform (e.g. corporate domain use, registered domains, etc.), and this may cause deliverability rates to drop significantly in 2024.
Our Suggestion: configure the Salesforce Private Domain or Sender Authentication Page (SAP) solution before February 2024 (as per Gmail's enforcement dates). Review your sending domains and ensure that they’re properly authenticated.
Read our articles:
- Marketing Cloud Engagement
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⭐One-Click Unsubscribe⭐
Joint statements by Gmail and Yahoo stress the need for easy and timely unsubscribing.
What does this mean? All unsubscribes should be processed within a two day timeframe and senders are encouraged to make that process a single click.
Our suggestion: We have always been a trust-centric, permission-first company. By default, emails that use commercial send classification contain a list-unsubscribe header that provides a one-click unsubscribe option for recipient email servers. Additionally, customers should ensure all unsubscribe requests are processed within 2 days (going a step further than CAN-SPAM 10 day processing).
Read about unsubscribes:
- Bulk Sender Guidelines for Marketing Cloud Engagement
- List-Unsubscribe Header Unsubscribe
- Send Classification
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⭐ Maintaining less than 0.3% spam output ⭐
Gmail’s existing bulk sender rules advise senders to keep spam output below 0.3 percent.
What does this mean? While not clearly stated as an enforced complaint rate at this time, 0.3% or less spam output is a recommended best practice to help maintain sender reputation.
Our Suggestion: focus on engaged subscriber segments (avoiding subscribers who haven't opened/clicked in 6+ months) and relevant content to what subscribers have opted in to receive. This will help keep complaints to a minimum and maximize ROI.
Read about managing SPAM rates in our articles:
Hi, @Michael Wright
Thank you for providing us with detailed information! I understood that unsub_center_url cannot be used as a one-click unsubscription as discussed here. I'll also be closely tracking their updates for more information on list-unsub requirements after June 1, 2024. If you have any further information, we would be very grateful if you could add it to this post. Thank you for your time!
