Details
Google and Yahoo! recently announced they are implementing new email authentication requirements for all email senders, effective February 2024, to improve deliverability and prevent spam. These changes are being made in a continuing effort to protect their users against fraudulent messages, such as scams and phishing attempts, and will prevent any emails sent from unauthenticated email addresses from reaching the recipient’s inbox.
If you’re sending emails to either Gmail or Yahoo! addresses, you must:
- Authenticate your emails using security protocols like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC.
- Implement email-header changes for unsubscribe (we will do this for you automatically).
- Maintain a spam complaint rate under 0.3% (no more than three spam reports for every 1,000 messages). However, as an industry best practice we recommend keeping your spam complaint rates under 0.1%.
How to Prepare
If You Own Your Own Domain
You will need to check and ensure that your domain is setup & configured in our platform. It will need to display a green 'Configured' indicator (as shown in the example below), in order to be correctly configured.
- Log into your account and open the Account area (⚙️ icon, at top right).
- Select Domains from the sidebar. Check this section to ensure your domain is configured correctly. If not, follow our domain configuration guide.
Once the domain is configured, we recommend that you setup self-authentication by instituting a DMARC policy with your domain provider. This is an important step to help build your strong sender reputation.
You’ll need to check that your domain provider has applied DMARC Policy to your domain. Your IT team can assist in setting this up for you with your domain provider.
If You Don’t Own Your Own Domain
The new requirements mean that we must authenticate each message using the domain found in the "from address".
However - note that you can only configure & authenticate domains that you own & have access to. As such, if you use our system to send your emails from @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, @bigpond.net.au, @xtra.co.nz, @me.com or any other 'free' email provider, then it's not possible to authenticate your domain in our, or any other similar product.
Thankfully, we can do the authentication on our end for you! For example, if you are sending from a domain you don’t own or can’t modify, such as xyzdounts@gmail.com, we will modify your "from address" to xyzdonuts=gmail.com@au.v6send.net.
In other words, we will re-write your from address to one that is authenticated, by changing the sender domain to @au.v6send.net. But don't worry - your subscribers will still see your original name in the "from" field, so nothing will appear to change for them.
Interested in getting your own domain name instead? You can read more about the benefits here.
Need More Information?
If you need more information or are not sure, please reach out to our Support team for assistance.