The new 2024 email sending requirements for Google and Yahoo are causing a lot of concern among email senders, but they needn't. In fact, the odds are good that you are already doing everything that you need to, or, if you aren't, you already know that you should be. The bottom line is that the general requirements are simply: Have proper authentication set up (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC - yes, all three), have the required one-click unsubscribe link in your headers in all of your bulk email, and keep your spam complaint rate down in the negligible zone (more on that later).
If you have the feeling that bot clicks seem to be an increasing problem in the email marketing world, well, you're not alone. Email bots, also referred to as server bots, are automated systems which click on the links contained in email. Whether there has been a dramatic increase in actual bot clicks, or just in the awareness of them, they are definitely a thing.
Micfo CEO Amir Golestan has been sentenced to prison for five years for using made-up people and fake email addresses in order to amass more than 735,000 IP addresses which he then sold to spammers and scammers in China, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, along with a smattering of actual legitimate customers. The actual crime of which he is convicted is wire fraud, however for our purposes it is the subject of that fraud, the acts and deeds which led to the fraud charges, which are interesting.
Here is a GDPR country contacts list, in other words a list of GDPR countries and to whom questions or complaints involving GDPR should be directed for each country. This GDPR countries list is based on information compiled directly from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).
GDPR applies to any business that collects any personal information data about individuals. This personal data, or 'personally identifiable information' (PII) includes things from which identity can be derived, such as, for example, a street address, a telephone number, an email address, and even an IP address.
Many people don't realize that when Brexit happened the United Kingdom ("UK") adopted their own version of GDPR, often referred to as the UK GDPR. When it comes to email marketing in the UK, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has made fairly explicitly clear that under the UK GDPR there are only two situations in which you can send someone email marketing: you must either have their prior consent, or they must be an existing customer (this is the so-called "soft opt-in").
Google has started sending notices of deactivating inactive Gmail addresses (actually they are going to deactivate dormant Google accounts, which includes Gmail accounts); and Yahoo posted a notice about deleting inactive mailboxes earlier this year. And if you don't pay attention to this it can, and likely will, hurt your deliverability.
By now you may have heard that Validity is going to start charging for access to their FBL, which they call the Universal FBL because they have made it the single point of access to the FBLs of so many ISPs. Here are all the details, including how much it will cost you.
There is a lot of confusion over what exactly qualifies as "legitimate interest" under GDPR. Additionally, you may be wondering whether GDPR governs the handling of personal data which you collected before GDPR went into effect and, if so, whether you can keep it under the legitimate interest test. The answer is both 'yes' and 'no'. Below we talk about the legitimate interest test generally, and how it applies to data acquired before GDPR went into effect. We also include information about how to obtain the model legitimate interest assessment (LIA) template which has been developed by a GDPR expert and which we have been given permission to share.
You should never send mass or bulk email through a new IP address before you warm up that new IP address. Warming up an IP address is a critical step towards not only having good deliverability, but also to making sure that your email isn't tagged as spam, or blocked. To illustrate the importance of warming up an IP address, we're going to tell you a story.
