Since February 1, 2024, Gmail and Yahoo have implemented new requirements for email senders to better protect users' inboxes from spam while ensuring that legitimate emails are received. It is highly likely that the rest of the industry will follow suit soon. Therefore, it is crucial that all email senders adhere to these requirements.
In this article, we'll explain what Gmail and Yahoo's requirements for email senders are and what actions you need to take to be compliant. You'll also find a quick recap in the table below:
| Requirements | Actions to take | |
| All email senders | Send from your own domain (not @gmail, @yahoo, or @orange) |
Get a custom domain and set up your professional email address through a service such as GoDaddy or OVH. |
| Authenticate your domain with DKIM and DMARC | Add the Brevo code, DKIM record, and DMARC record to your domain. We guide you through the whole process in our dedicated article Authenticate your domain with Brevo (Brevo code, DKIM record, DMARC record). | |
| Stay under a 0.3% spam complaint rate | Follow our best practices for email deliverability and use Gmail's Postmaster Tools to monitor your spam complaint rate. | |
| Bulk email senders (> 5.000 emails per day) with a dedicated IP | Align the email address you use to send emails with the domain you have authenticated with DKIM or SPF | Make sure that the email address you're sending emails from matches the domain you authenticated with DKIM or SPF, or is a subdomain of it. |
What all senders should do
🌐 Send from your own domain (not @gmail, @yahoo, or @orange)
If you send an email from a free email address (@gmail, @yahoo, or @orange), your emails will most likely be delivered to your recipients' spam folder.
To avoid this, you'll need to get a custom domain (if you don't have one already) and set up your professional email address through a service such as GoDaddy or OVH. Not only will this make your emails look more professional and recognizable to your recipients, but it will also help your emails reach your contacts’ inboxes.
To learn more, check our dedicated article Why you need to replace your free email address with a professional one.
🔒 Authenticate your domain with DKIM and DMARC
DKIM and DMARC are two email authentication methods that help reduce the risk of spam, phishing, and other malicious activities, as well as increase the likelihood of your emails landing in your recipients' inboxes.
You can access a detailed procedure on how to authenticate your domain with DKIM and/or DMARC in our dedicated article Authenticate your domain with Brevo (Brevo code, DKIM record, DMARC record).
If you already have a DMARC record in place but it is missing a rua tag, you can update your existing DMARC record and add Brevo's rua tag at the end. Your DMARC record should then have the following value:
v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:rua@dmarc.brevo.com
To verify whether your domain is authenticated with DKIM and DMARC, follow these steps:
- Go to the Domains page.
- Select the domain you use for sending emails.
- Confirm the presence of the Value matched message next to the Brevo code, DKIM record, and DMARC record.
If you don't see any domain listed on the Domains page or if the message reads ❌ Value mismatched instead of ✅ Value matched, it indicates that your domain is not authenticated with DKIM and/or DMARC.
📉 Stay under a 0.3% spam complaint rate
Gmail requires you keep your spam complaint rate under 0.3% in Postmaster Tools to avoid having your emails delivered to the spam folder with a slim chance of returning to the inbox. With Postmaster Tools, you can view and monitor different dashboards with statistics related to delivery errors, spam reports, etc.
If you find that you're exceeding the 0.3% limit, check our best practices for email deliverability and our dedicated article Why are emails being delivered to the spam folder? to learn how to lower your complaint rate.
Step 1. Get started with Postmaster Tools
The first step is to go to Postmaster Tools and add your domain there so that Gmail can retrieve your email statistics:
- Go to Postmaster Tools.
- Click Get Started.
- Enter the domain that you use to send your emails.
- Copy the TXT record provided by Gmail's Postmaster Tools.
Step 2. Verify your domain
To be able to retrieve your email statistics, Gmail needs to verify that you are the owner of the domain. For that, you'll need to add a DNS record to your domain host by copying a value from Postmaster Tools to your domain host.
- In a new tab, log into your domain host account. If you don't know what your domain host is, you can check our dedicated article Identify your domain host.
- Go to the page where you update DNS records.
- Create a new DNS record with a TXT type.
- Paste the value you copied from Postmaster Tools.
- Save your DNS record.
- Go back to Gmail's Postmaster Tools and click Verify.
You will then be able to view your spam complaint rate from Google email addresses and other valuable data there.
To learn more about how to use Postmaster Tools, check their dedicated help center section.
What bulk senders (> 5.000 emails per day) with a dedicated IP should do
🤝 Align the email address you use to send emails with the domain you have authenticated with DKIM or SPF
If you send more than 5,000 emails per day and are on a dedicated IP, you will also have to make sure that the domain part of the email address you use to send emails matches the domain you authenticated with SPF or DKIM. This alignment ensures that the DKIM and/or SPF signatures on your emails match the domain authenticated in Brevo.
Here are some examples of alignments between your authenticated domain and your sender's email address:
| Authenticated domain | Sender's email address | |
| Example 1 ✅ | mycompany.com | marketing@mycompany.com |
| Example 2 ✅ | news.mycompany.com | marketing@news.mycompany.com |
| Example 3 ✅ | mycompany.com | marketing@news.mycompany.com |
| Example 4 ❌ | news.mycompany.com | marketing@mycompany.com |
What happens if I don't follow these requirements?
Ideally, you should already be following Gmail and Yahoo's requirements since February 1, 2024, to prevent your emails from being marked as spam or facing delivery issues.
However, if you haven't made these changes yet, Brevo has you covered. Temporarily, we will replace your sender’s email address with one that aligns with Gmail and Yahoo's requirements. This applies particularly if you are using a free email address or haven't authenticated your domain but still need to send emails to @gmail or @yahoo recipients. This ensures that your emails will continue to reach your recipients' inboxes.
Note that some recipients might mark your emails are spam, even if they originally landed in their inbox, because they won't recognize the sender's email address. That's another reason why we highly recommend you follow Gmail and Yahoo's requirements as soon as possible.
For a preview of what your email address will look like to your recipients, refer to the following example:
| Original email address | mycompany@gmail.com |
| Replaced email address for marketing emails | mycompany@5000001.brevosend.com |
| Replaced email address for transactional emails | mycompany@5000001.t-sender-sib.com |
FAQs
Gmail and Yahoo have been implementing these requirements since February 1, 2024.
If you use a free email address or haven't authenticated your domain yet, Brevo is giving you more time to implement the changes by temporarily replacing your email address with a compliant one, but you will eventually need to make the changes to send with your own domain.
No, these requirements are required by Gmail and Yahoo regardless of the email provider you use, whether it's Brevo or another service.
Yes, transactional senders should also follow Gmail and Yahoo's requirements, especially if they send more than 5,000 emails a day.
Currently, you only need to follow these requirements if you send emails to anyone using a Yahoo, Gmail, Googlemail, or Google Workspace email address.
Nevertheless, given that major mailbox providers such as Google and Yahoo have implemented these requirements, it is likely that the rest of the industry will soon require all senders to authenticate their domains. That's why we recommend that all senders follow these requirements.
Yes, Brevo will replace any free email addresses used for sending emails, regardless of the recipients.
If you already have a DMARC record in place but it is missing a rua tag, you can update your existing DMARC record and add Brevo's rua tag at the end. Your DMARC record should then have the following value:
v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:rua@dmarc.brevo.com
No action is needed on your side for these other requirements implemented by Gmail and Yahoo:
- When setting up your dedicated IP, you have already authenticated your domain using SPF. Additionally, SPF is not necessary for users on a shared IP.
- Brevo already ensures that sending domains or IPs have valid forward and reverse DNS records (PTR records).
- Brevo already formats emails according to the Internet Message Format standard (RFC 5322).
- Brevo already supports a one-click unsubscribe for the list-unsubscribe header (RFC 8058) and includes a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the email body of marketing and subscribed emails.
⏭️ What's next?
For a more detailed review of Gmail and Yahoo's new sender requirements, check Google's email sender guidelines and Yahoo's sender best practices.
🤔 Have a question?
If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.
If you’re looking for help with a project using Brevo, we can match you with the right certified Brevo expert partner.