There's only a couple days left until Yahoo and Google are due to begin rolling out their new bulk sender updates. Emails that don't comply with the new updates may start seeing higher rejection and spam placement rates.
A lot is changing, but if you're late to the game or strapped for time, these are arguably the two most important changes to implement:
- Basic DMARC compliance (if you send >5,000 emails per day)
- Keeping your spam complaint rate under 0.3% (regardless of sending volume)
Read on for two very quick help snippets. You might be closer to compliance than you think!
Making sure emails are DMARC authenticated
If you're not sure where to start, here's a flowchart to help.
Google and Yahoo will now start requiring DMARC authentication for higher-volume senders. However, for this update a p=none policy is enough for basic compliance without disruption — though we recommend eventually moving to a quarantine policy.
If that means nothing to you, this article should make you a casual expert in no time:
Dee Mirai
If you're already passing SPF and DKIM, then DMARC compliance is probably not far away. And if you're already using SendForensics, you can simply log in and upload our starter DMARC record to your DNS provider.
Your next email analyses will likely show compliance and you'll start seeing real-world compliance data within 48 hours to prove it. Alternatively, read the following guide for self-implementation:
Leo Hatton
Sign up for Google Postmaster Tools
Your spam complaint rate must remain below 0.3% if you send more than 5,000 emails per day to Gmail inboxes. This threshold is based on the number of people who receive your emails and manually report them as spam — not when your email actually lands in spam (if it isn't being seen, it can't be complained about!).
Google Postmaster Tools is completely free and monitors your sending reputation with Gmail, which includes providing the all-important complaint rate metric. Keep a constant watch for signs of approaching the 0.3% threshold so action can be taken pre-emptively.
If you're a SendForensics user, you can integrate natively with Google Postmaster Tools to track complaint rates in your Reputation dashboard along with other email metrics. This way, you can also set alerts to get notified the moment your complaint rate approaches the threshold.