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).
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.
The email industry is abuzz today with the news that Validity (nee Return Path) is about to start charging for access to the feedback loops (FBLs) which they have carefully cultivated and curated for years. This week their customers received one of two letters indicating that Validity was going to start charging for access to their Universal Feedback Loop.
Google is ending a pilot program that allowed political campaigns to bypass the spam filter, and they have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit that the RNC filed against them. Note that Google is not 'restarting' spam filtering in Gmail for political campaigns, as claimed by some, and that's because they never stopped. Confused? You won't be, read on.
Users of mass email services such as Gmass, Woodpecker, Lemlist and others, that have been using Gmail's API to send bulk email that tricked recipients into thinking that they were receiving personal one-to-one emails, have been put on notice today by Google: "Applications that use multiple accounts to abuse Google policies, bypass Gmail account limitation, circumvent filters and spam, or otherwise subvert restrictions are prohibited from accessing Gmail API scopes."
If you're looking for the promised "this is spam" option that Google promised with it's new Gmail political campaign pilot program (you know, the program that lets political campaigns sign up to by-pass the Gmail spam filter and go right to your inbox), you're not alone. Oh, it's there, but it's hidden.
Google's Gmail Verified Sender Pilot Program for political campaigns is up and running, and political campaigns can now apply to be part of Google's program which allows political campaign email to bypass the spam filter and be delivered directly to Gmail users' inboxes, but only once unless the user doesn't click on the big red "I don't want this" message that will accompany it.
Most (but not all) email tester and email list cleaning and validation services are generally frowned on by many (if not most) inbox providers and ISPs, and many consider their use to be a sign that you may be a spammer. The rise of list cleaning (also known as "list hygiene") and email tester services, by which we mean email address validation and verification services, has tracked in tandem with the rise of new ways to detect spamming activities, including adding email addresses to mailing lists without consent. It's this last bit, the "adding email addresses to a mailing list without consent" that is the sticking point, and it is that activity which list hygiene services are, for the most part, intended to facilitate. Which is why they are disdained by the email receiving industries (inbox providers, ISPs, and spam filtering services). There's a reason that they are called "list cleaning" services; and if you are building your mailing list with consent then your list won't be dirty and need cleaning. Note that it's important to distinguish these services that offer just these list "hygiene" services, and those who help you to not only clean up your email list, but also to make sure that you are following best practices.
Just as with any other industry, the email deliverability and email marketing industries have their own […]
Whither goest Mailchimp? Often an email company being acquired leads to abuse handling and opt-in standards declining, and so to an associated decline in reputation and deliverability. It took Mailchimp 20 years to build up the good reputation that they have in the email receiving community; it can take them, or Intuit, or both, fewer than six months to destroy it.
