Email is one of the most valuable tools we have for modern communication. Unfortunately, in today’s digital world, inboxes are becoming increasingly cluttered and chaotic. On average, an office worker receives around 121 emails every day. Only a fraction of those messages are valuable, and even fewer effectively grab the attention of the intended recipient.
To address the growing issue of “inbox overwhelm”, and help users avoid the headache of endless spam, Google introduced new rules in 2024. These new “bulk email rules” require companies and marketers sending more than 5,000 messages to Gmail addresses each day to take new steps to ensure they can bypass the spam filters.
Here’s what you need to know if bulk emails are part of your marketing strategy.
The New Requirements for Bulk Senders in 2024
As of February 2024, Gmail now requires all bulk senders to focus on three things:
- Authenticating emails (to prove they genuinely come from you).
- Making it easy for users to “unsubscribe” from your email list.
- Ensuring you’re sending emails that people want to read.
Ultimately, failing to adhere to the new rules set by Google for bulk email messages can lead to significant consequences. Starting in February, bulk senders will encounter errors on a portion of their non-compliant email traffic, highlighting issues they need to address.
After this, however, Google will start to become more proactive in how it deals with non-compliant senders. In April 2024, the company will start rejecting a portion of non-compliant email traffic, increasing the rejection rate gradually over time. By June 2024, all bulk senders will be expected to be fully compliant with the new Google bulk mail guidelines.
The Step-by-Step Path to Success
These new rules are unlikely to be too disruptive for modern marketers. After all, regulators across the globe have long required organisations to follow similar standards. You should already be “validating” your email address, sending valuable content, and making it easy for users to unsubscribe to contend with things like the CAN-SPAM Act.
Google’s new rules simply draw renewed attention to these bulk email best practices. Here’s how you can ensure you comply with the guidelines in 2024.
Step 1: Authenticate Your Sender Email
Email authentication is the method marketers use to prove to email providers that messages are coming from a specific company and not a fraudulent actor. It’s important to help prevent spammers from using domain names to send fraudulent or phishing emails that harm your reputation.
To authenticate your email address, you’ll need to set up a few key frameworks:
- Sender Policy Framework: SPF is a protocol developed to reduce the risk of sender address forgery. You’ll need to publish an SPF record in your domain’s DNS, listing the mail servers permitted to send messages from your domain. You can find out more about this here.
- DomainKeys Identified Mail: DKIM adds “digital signatures” to emails, verifying that the email hasn’t been altered in transit. To implement this, you’ll need a public/private key pair. The public key will be published in your domain DNS records, while the private key is used to sign your emails.
- Domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance: DMARC is a framework which works alongside DKIM and SPF. It allows the owner of a domain to specify how email receivers should handle messages that fail to pass DKIM and SPF checks, allowing you to get reports on emails claiming to be from you. Again, you’ll need to publish a DMARC record in your DNS, outlining your policy.
Step 2: Make Unsubscribing Simple
Now, Google requires all marketing emails to support one-click unsubscribe methods. This means making it as simple as possible for users to stop receiving messages from you. You’ll need to ensure there’s a visible unsubscribe link in every email you send, while also creating a specific strategy for ensuring a streamlined process for users.
To ensure you’re adhering to Google’s guidelines:
- Add unsubscribe headers to emails: Use specific headers in your outgoing messages that enable one-click unsubscribe options. This should ensure users can rapidly see and take advantage of the option to unsubscribe from your list.
- Offer a range of unsubscribe options: Consider giving recipients the opportunity to review and change subscription preferences. For instance, instead of unsubscribing completely, your customers might want to receive fewer emails or just messages about specific topics.
- Create an unsubscribe strategy: Configure your email system backend to ensure you can process unsubscribe requests quickly. At the same time, make sure you have a full strategy in place for how you’ll draw attention to unsubscribe options, and handle requests.
- Format emails correctly: Follow Google’s message formatting guidelines to ensure it’s easy for users to find your unsubscribe links, and reduce your risk of messages being incorrectly sent to the spam inbox.
Step 3: Sending Emails Customers Want to Receive
Finally, Google wants bulk email senders to take extra steps to ensure they’re only sending customers messages they actually want to receive. This is something you should already be focused on, as sending high-quality emails is crucial to increasing engagement and conversions.
The new Google spam threshold makes it even more important to ensure customers actually want to see your messages, so consider using strategies like:
- Double opt-in: Ask users to confirm they want to opt-in to your email newsletter, and give them the option to share information about the kind of content they want to receive.
- Personalisation and segmentation: Divide customers into groups based on their behaviours, characteristics, and other factors, to ensure you’re sending relevant messages.
- Monitor email metrics: Pay attention to your spam rate with Google’s Postmaster tools, and monitor real-time feedback to optimise your strategy over time.
Quick Tips for Bulk Email Senders
For many companies already sending bulk emails for event marketing and similar strategies, adapting to Google’s updated rules shouldn’t be too complex. There’s a good chance your email strategy already includes some methods for email authentication, simplifying unsubscribe workflows, and delivering quality content to recipients.
However, if you’re concerned, here are a few tips you can follow to make adherence easier:
- Use dedicated URLs for major events: In place of a subdomain, a dedicated domain for an event gives you more control over your sender's reputation. This can help to protect your email deliverability from being affected by other activities on a shared domain.
- Warm up your domain: Warming up your domain by gradually increasing email volume over time can help to establish a stronger reputation. If you start sending high volumes of emails suddenly from a new domain, this could lead to your messages being flagged as spam.
- Use alternative delivery methods: For crucial transactional emails, like order confirmations, consider establishing a backup delivery method, such as a different domain, or SMS messages. This can ensure important messages aren’t missed.
- Clean your email list: Avoid frequently sending messages to subscribers who stop engaging with your email messages. Track your analytics to pinpoint disengaged subscribers and invite them to unsubscribe, or simply remove them from your list.
- Respect opt-outs: As difficult as it can be to lose people on your email list, it’s important to respect your customer’s unsubscribe requests immediately. Don’t follow up on an opt-out request with more emails asking people why they don’t want your messages.
- Prep your marketing team: Ensure your marketing team is informed on how to set up DKIM records for your event domain, how to use warming-up strategies, and how to design emails to deliver value and simplify the unsubscribe experience.
Update Your Bulk Email Strategy for 2024
Ultimately, modern email marketers can’t afford to ignore the new guidelines implemented by Google for bulk email messaging. If you’re not authenticating your email, making it easy for users to unsubscribe, and delivering only the messages your customers want to see, you’re putting yourself at risk. Not only will you harm your reputation with Google, but you’ll end up damaging your relationships with subscribers and potential customers too.
Implementing the strategies above to adhere to Google’s guidelines will ensure you can both avoid the spam folder and deliver a more valuable email experience to your subscribers.
