How to be compliant with Gmail and Yahoo new sender requirements (February 2024)

Starting in February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo will introduce stricter requirements that senders must meet to make sure their emails will be delivered to their recipients' inboxes. These requirements will be applied to senders sending more than 5000 emails per day.

The best practices that Carts Guru has advised their clients will now become requirements so you should already be compliant with most of the points that senders must address.

Here are the requirements that senders must meet to pass spam filters:

1. Set up SPF and DKIM email authentification for your domain

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF) are the two foundational forms of email authentication. DKIM provides a signature to your email. SPF allows you to list all the IP addresses that are authorized to send email on behalf of your domain.

What should I do?

When you started using Carts Guru, our team set up those records on your domain provider so you should already be compliant with this point. If that's not the case, please contact us to get guidance on this task as the records need to be validated on our side.

2. Set up DMARC on your sending domain

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) is a standard that builds on SPF and DKIM. It is designed to give email domain owners the ability to protect their domain from unauthorized use, commonly known as email spoofing

What should I do?
If you don’t already have a DMARC record in place, you will need to add one to your DNS. 
Here are the steps to implement DMARC:

• Go to your DNS hosting provider and create a record.
• Select TXT DNS record type.
• Add the host value ‘_DMARC’. If your DNS provider does not automatically append your domain name, adjust the host value to include your domain ‘_dmarc.domain.com’.
• Add the value: v=DMARC1; p=none in the value section
• Hit the save/ submit/ submit button and verify your DMARC record has been added correctly to your DNS.

Each DMARC record needs to define a policy, which can be one of three options: none, quarantine, or reject. Although Gmail’s requirement for DMARC is to set it at p=none, this is a minimum bar. P=none instructs the receiving mailbox provider to take no action on an email that fails an SPF/DKIM check.

Carts Guru can guide you to set up the DMARC record. Get in touch with our team to get assistance.

3. Keep reported spam rates below 0.3% in Google Postmaster

Senders will need to maintain their spam complaint rate below 0.3% in Google Postmaster.

Carts Guru will provide further analytics shortly so that you can monitor your spam-compliant rate per domain directly on the platform. 

In the meantime, our deliverability team is already actively monitoring the deliverability of your emails and notify your account manager if any issues arise.

What should I do?

Carts Guru can also help you set up GPM records in your domain provider configuration so we can better monitor Gmail Spam rates. Get in contact with your Account Manager so we can provide you with a GPM record in case you haven't configured it yet.

In case your spam rate is higher than 0.3%, follow the advice provided in our Deliverability guide.

4. Configure correctly your From sender name

Gmail will verify that your "From: address" matches the domain authenticated with SPF or DKIM. If it's not the case, your emails will be quarantined which will impact your deliverability.

This means that, in case you are impersonating a Gmail From: header, you should change it. In a nutshell, don't send from "example@gmail.com"

What should I do?

When using Carts Guru, your "From: address" is automatically set to be your domain once you have validated your SPF, therefore you don't need to worry on this point.

5. Make it easy to unsubscribe

One of the new sender requirements is that every email must include a one-click unsubscribe link.

What should I do?

Carts Guru is already taking care of it for you by adding by default an Unsubscribe link in the footer of your emails. Additionally, in the next weeks, we will be adding an easier Unsubscribe button or link next to the From address at the top of your email.

Make sure you go through your emails and domain configuration before February 2024 to make sure you are compliant with the previous requirements and avoid any interruption of sending when the requirements will be enforced. Carts Guru is available to assist you on the task and answer your questions.