Digital Lab

Google Implements New Sender Requirements 2.1.24

Most companies aren’t ready for the changes… but that’s ok.

We’ll get you caught up to speed on what’s changing, and what you need to do to avoid the chaos next month.

What’s Changing?

First of all, these changes are going to affect anyone who is sending From or To email addresses based on Gmail. Meaning your org is using Gsuite or your target prospect is using Gsuite.

So while this won’t affect everyone… over 3 billion people are using Gsuite today for their email system. So it DOES matter for your email marketing and outreach.

1. SPF and DKIM record authentication is required from a domain-level
2. Reverse DNS settings are required for all IPs/domains
3. Spam rates reported in Postmaster must stay below 0.1%
4. Marketing messages and subscribed messages must support one-click unsubscribe, and include a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the message body.

If you don’t meet the requirements described, your emails might not be delivered as expected or might be marked as spam.

So What Should I Do?

There are two aspects to this change that you need to take action against immediately.

1. Update your domain settings to meet the new requirements
2. Update the way you write email content to meet the new requirements

Domain Settings

Your domain settings affect every email within your organization. So one quick change can protect everyone on your team. At the same time, not updating records can keep your entire team at risk.

SPF and DKIM records are connections between your Domain settings and the platforms you are using to send email. Every email service provider (ESP) will have custom settings that need to be applied to your domain for authentication.

Some examples:

• CRMs (Hubspot, Salesforce, Zoho, etc.)
• Email Tools (Outreach, Sendlist, Mailchimp, etc.)
• Email Providers (Gmail, Outlook, etc.)

Simply looking at each platforms settings you’ll find details for DKIM and SPF records. Match those values up in your Domain Name System (DNS) and you’ll be set. Changes here typically take 24-48 hours to validate.

Email Content

There are two parts to your email content that you need to prepare to improve your deliverability.

Firstly, you HAVE to have an unsubscribe link in all of your sales & marketing emails clearly visible. This gives people an easy way to stop you from emailing them without marking you as spam. This also helps recipients protect their inboxes from messages they don’t want.

This might seem like a scary change at first, of course, we don’t want people unsubscribing. Right?

When people unsubscribe it likely means your outreach to them was never going anywhere. This means that anyone who’s still on your list is more likely to take the action you want. Unsubscribes ensure that the next time you send an email to your list, it’s MORE relevant with higher performance.

Secondly, you need to maintain a spam rate of 0.1% or lower.

Out of 1000 people, only 1 can mark you as spam. Any more than that and you run the risk of having your domain blacklisted by Google. A blacklist prevents you from being able to send any more emails from that domain to Gsuite users.

Adding an unsubscribe link will already help bring your spam rate down.

The next thing to do is make sure the content you’re sending is actually relevant to the user.

Ex. “an email about logistics services to a software company”

This would be an irrelevant email, more likely to be marked as spam by the recipient.

So double-check that your email lists are full of contacts who will get value out of your message.

Lastly, don’t be too salesy.

Getting an introduction to a new prospect should be a win-win. It’s not about how quickly can you tell the prospect all about you and why they should give you money. Focus on what the prospect wants/needs. Write to give as much value to the recipient as possible.

Is your business ready for the February 1st changes?

Click the button below to start a conversation with our Email team, we’ll be happy to audit your email system for free. We will tell you exactly where you’re at right now & what needs to be done to prepare.