Starting in February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo plan to enforce new sender requirements. These measures aim to protect users' inboxes from spam more effectively while ensuring legitimate emails are received.
To ensure your marketing emails reach your audience's inbox, you'll need to comply with Gmail and Yahoo's sender requirements. Don't worry, though. If you're using Brevo, you're most likely already following many of these requirements as best practices.
Who do the new sender requirements affect?
If you’re sending messages to anyone using a Yahoo, Gmail, Googlemail, or Google Workspace address, you’ll need to follow these requirements.
Additionally, if you’re sending more than 5,000 emails a day, you’ll have to follow a couple of extra bulk sender requirements. We’ll point out which ones in the section below.
What are the new sender requirements I need to follow?
In the following sections, we'll explain the new sender requirements and how to meet them to be recognized as a legitimate sender in 2024 ⬇️.
Requirements for all senders
There are four main requirements that all senders should comply with:
What does it mean? DKIM is an email authentication method. Authenticating your domain using DKIM allows you to sign your emails with your domain, much like signing a letter with your signature. This ensures the recipient that the email is genuinely from you.
What should I do? If you haven't set up DKIM email authentication for your domain, we recommend doing so.
To learn more, check our dedicated article Authenticate your domain (DKIM and Brevo code).
What does it mean? SPF is an email authentication method. Authenticating your domain using SPF allows you to verify which IP addresses are connected to your domain and have the right to send emails. This ensures the recipient that the email is genuinely from you.
What should I do? If you're on a dedicated IP, you should have already authenticated your domain using SPF when setting up your IP. SPF is not necessary for users on a shared IP.
To learn more, check our dedicated article Set up a dedicated IP in Brevo.
What does it mean? You will need to keep your spam complaint rate under 0.3% as per Gmail's Postmaster Tools. If your spam complaints exceed 0.3% regularly, your emails will likely be delivered to the spam folder with a slim chance of returning to the inbox.
What should I do? If you haven't created your Postmaster Tools account, we recommend doing so. You can view your spam complaint rate from Google email addresses and other valuable data there. Additionally, you should monitor your complaint rates from Yahoo, Microsoft, and other email addresses by examining your email campaign statistics.
If you find that you're exceeding the 0.3% limit, check our dedicated article Why are emails being delivered to the spam folder? to learn how to lower your complaint rate.
What does it mean? If you send an email from a @gmail.com or @googlemail.com email address, your emails will most likely end up in the spam folder.
What should I do? Stop sending emails from a @gmail.com or @googlemail.com email address. If you don't have a domain, consider checking out domain hosts like GoDaddy or OVH. Once you've purchased a domain, you can authenticate it in Brevo to send emails.
Extra requirements for senders who send over 5.000 emails per day
Senders who send more than 5.000 emails per day have to comply with two extra requirements:
What does it mean? DMARC is an email authentication method that extends SPF and DKIM. It instructs mailbox providers on how to handle emails that fail the SPF, DKIM, or both checks and claim to be from your domain, potentially indicating spoofing.
What should I do? If you haven't set up DMARC email authentication for your domain, you should at least add a non-impacting DMARC record on your domain, such as "v=DMARC1; p=none". These instructions tell Gmail that if your emails fail the SPF and DKIM checks, they will still be sent to the recipient’s inbox so that it doesn't negatively impact your sendings.
This also means that if someone fakes your email address, for example, and tries to send malicious messages, these messages will still go through to the recipient’s inbox. However, since you now have DMARC records, you can track who sent the emails from your domain.
If someone fakes your identity, fails SPF and DKIM checks, and tries to send spam, setting your DMARC policy to “p=reject” will stop those emails from being delivered.
To learn more about DMARC email authentication, check our dedicated article What is a DMARC policy and how does it affect the sending of my emails?.
What does it mean? The email address you use to send emails needs to align with 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 your Brevo account.
What should I do? 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. For example, if you authenticate the domain thegreenyoga.com, you should send your emails from email addresses such as abby@thegreenyoga.com or james@news.thegreenyoga.com.
Are there any other new sender requirements?
No action is needed on your side for the following new sender requirements:
- 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 one-click unsubscribe 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 Google 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.