Gmail and Yahoo, two of the most influential players in the email service provider industry, have announced efforts to improve email security and the user experience. By February 2024, bulk senders are required to authenticate emails, streamline the unsubscribe process, and prioritize recipient consent. These changes are intended to reduce spam and enhance people’s trust.
Acxiom understands the importance of this and our Email Connections team is taking a proactive and collaborative approach with deployment partners to implement measures necessary to ensure compliance and enhance email campaign effectiveness.
Authentication
Google and Yahoo will require those who send significant volumes of emails to strongly authenticate their emails following well-established best practices. Ultimately, this will close loopholes attackers exploit that threaten everyone who uses email. All the emails we send on behalf of our clients follow these requirements; therefore, no action is required by our clients to remain compliant with DMARC alignment. If a client is using a custom domain, we can make small adjustments to ensure their friendly “from” domains are aligned with the sending domain to successfully pass SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Easy Unsubscribe
Google and Yahoo will enforce a one-click list unsubscribe. At Acxiom, we pride ourselves on transparency and choice. Recognizing the importance of streamlined unsubscribe processes, we’ve already optimized our mechanisms to make it effortless for recipients to easily opt out of our communications if they choose to. Although our deployment partners have included a “one-click” unsubscribe for more than five years, they plan to implement the newly enforced List-Unsubscribe via ‘Post’ version of this (List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click) in outgoing messages universally by the end of March 2024.
Avoid Spam
Google and Yahoo will enforce a spam rate threshold that senders must stay under to ensure recipients don’t receive unwanted messages. More specifically, spam rates reported to Google and Yahoo must be below 0.10% and avoid ever reaching a spam rate of 0.30% or higher. Our spam rates are well within these new requirements, and we don’t anticipate any necessary changes. We will continue to monitor email performance and adjust if/when necessary.
Email marketing is evolving, and Acxiom remains persistent in our commitment to providing clients with cutting-edge, compliant, and effective email marketing solutions. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to innovate and adapt to the dynamic landscape of digital communication. By collaborating with our deployment partners, implementing authentication protocols, and prioritizing the user experience, we are confident our strategies will not only meet but exceed these evolving standards.