Google and Yahoo have announced new requirements for bulk email senders on their platforms. While these requirements have long been considered best practices, but both companies are making them mandatory as of February, 2024.

Links to the announcements are provided below.

Impact to Higher Logic customers

The new requirements directly impact Higher Logic's Marketing Automation customers due to the volume of email-send activity from their Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Enterprise (Thrive Marketing Enterprise) and Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Professional (Thrive Marketing Professional) accounts.

New requirements for senders

The key points from the Google and Yahoo announcements are listed below.

NOTE: Higher Logic encourages you to carefully review them and to contact us if you have any questions or require additional information.

All senders

All senders should authenticate all mail with SPF and DKIM. The FROM address domain is used for SPF and/or DKIM.
All senders must include a one-click unsubscribe method like the list-unsubscribe header. Higher Logic includes a list-unsubscribe header by default for Informz and Real Magnet customers.

NOTE: Higher Logic has implemented a change in Informz and Real Magnet to ensure that your organization is automatically in compliance with the URL-based list-unsubscribe header requirement that goes into effect on June 1, 2024. No action is required on your part.

Yahoo and Gmail will each set a clear spam complaint threshold for senders to remain to receive inbox placement.
- Google indicates that senders should maintain a complaint rate below 0.1% and avoid a rate above 0.3%.

Bulk senders (5000+ emails per day)

Bulk senders should publish a DMARC record for their FROM address domain. Refer to Do I have to create a DMARC record?, below.

Do I have to publish a DMARC record?

The new requirements indicate that each bulk sender must publish a DMARC record for their FROM domain. You must also be sure that the FROM domain matches the domain in your message's SPF and/or DKIM headers.

More information about DMARC is available at https://dmarc.org/.
A list of tools to help in deploying DMARC for your organization can be found at https://dmarc.org/resources/deployment-tools/.

What happens to email messages that do not comply with these new requirements?

If an email message fails authentication or DMARC alignment, Yahoo and Google will "bounce" the message with an error code that indicates the reason for the rejection.

Mail that exceeds the spam threshold or is missing the required unsubscribe mechanisms will likely end up in the spam or junk folder.

Yahoo

Yahoo has indicated the following regarding its rollout:

"Enforcement will be gradually rolled out, as we monitor compliance through the first half of the year."

Google

Google has indicated the following updated enforcement details regarding its rollout:

"Enforcement for bulk senders that don't meet our Email sender guidelines will be gradual and progressive."

In February 2024, bulk senders who don't meet sender requirements will start getting temporary errors (with error codes) on a small percentage of their non-compliant email traffic.
- These temporary errors are meant to help senders identify email traffic that doesn't meet our guidelines so that senders can resolve issues that result in non-compliance.
In April 2024, we'll start rejecting a percentage of non-compliant email traffic, and we'll gradually increase the rejection rate.
- For example, if 75% of a sender's traffic meets our requirements, we'll start rejecting a percentage of the remaining 25% of traffic that isn't compliant.
Bulk senders have until June 1, 2024 to implement one-click unsubscribe in all commercial, promotional messages.

Next step - verify email authentication in your account

Before February, 2024, you should review your account setup to ensure that email authentication is set up.

For assistance with setting up authentication, refer to the relevant knowledge base article:

Thrive Marketing Professional / Informz - https://support.higherlogic.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039121491-Email-Authentication
Thrive Marketing Enterprise / Real Magnet - https://support.higherlogic.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032695392-Email-Authentication

TIP: If you require further assistance or have questions, create a case with Higher Logic Support; they will be happy to help you with email authentication.

Email authentication and SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

For information on SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and how they work to authenticate your email messages, check out the following article:

SPF, DKIM, DMARC: The 3 Pillars of Email Authentication - https://www.higherlogic.com/blog/spf-dkim-dmarc-email-authentication/

New Bulk Sender Requirements