Best Practices

Gmail and Yahoo have recently implemented new measures to combat spam and enhance email security, particularly affecting corporate email senders.

Gmail's New Anti-Spam Measures

  • AI-Powered Spam Detection: Gmail has integrated advanced AI models to better identify and block spam, especially during high-volume periods like the holiday season. This enhancement has led to a 35% reduction in scam reports.
  • Bulk Sender Requirements (Effective February 2024):
    • Email Authentication: Bulk senders (those sending over 5,000 emails per day) must authenticate their emails using both SPF and DKIM protocols.
    • Unsubscribe Option: Emails must include an easy-to-use unsubscribe link, allowing recipients to opt out effortlessly.
    • Spam Rate Threshold: Senders must maintain low spam rates, staying below a 0.10% threshold to avoid penalties.

Yahoo's Anti-Spam Measures

  • Alignment with Gmail's Policies: Yahoo is aligning its email authentication requirements with Gmail's standards, emphasizing the necessity for SPF and DKIM authentication for all senders.
  • Recommendations for Corporate Email Senders:
  1. Implement SPF and DKIM Authentication: Ensure your emails are authenticated with both SPF and DKIM to comply with Gmail and Yahoo's requirements.
  2. Maintain Low Spam Rates: Monitor your email campaigns to keep spam complaint rates below 0.10%.
  3. Provide Clear Unsubscribe Options: Include a straightforward unsubscribe link in your emails to allow recipients to opt out easily.
  4. Use Consistent 'From' Addresses: Utilize consistent sender addresses for different categories of emails to build trust and improve deliverability.
  5. Monitor Email Deliverability: Regularly check your email deliverability metrics and adjust your strategies to maintain compliance with evolving email provider policies.

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Best Practices

By adhering to these guidelines, corporate email senders can enhance their email deliverability and reduce the likelihood of their messages being marked as spam.

7 Recommendations from indigitall

  • Brief: Write your message concisely and clearly with language appropriate to your audience. Use personalization variables to communicate directly.
  • Visual: Attractive design with use of multimedia elements to capture attention.
  • Single message: Focus the communication attention with one main idea. Don't confuse the recipient with scattered content.
  • Call to action: Messages must move to user action by clicking a button. It should be an interactive message for the user to decide.
  • Mobile vision: Attends to the design for both, desktop monitor and mobile screen. Keep in midnd that more and more pople read their emails from their smartphones.
  • Don't abuse sending emails: Your customers are fed up with spam. Provide value and relevant information in all your communications.
  • GDPR: Complies with the GDPR standard for emails addressed to users residing in the EU. Remember that you must prove that the user's consent has been obtained freely and explicitly (without pre-marked fields).

How to prevent your campaign to be treated as SPAM

  1. The first is obtaining the express prior consent for all your campaigns.
  2. You must maintain a clean user's database: Checking the invalid recipients and removing the bounced emails.
  3. Give a link to unsubscribe from your campaigns. This link must specify what area or areas the customer wants to unsubscribe. It is necessary to remove these unsubscribers from the database.
  4. Avoid common words used for spam, mainly for the subjects: discounts, sales, free...
  5. Customize your emails: "Hello {{username}}..." -> "Hello Michael...".
  6. Don't send often mass email campaigns. It is better to segment the audience and send only relevant information.
  7. Check the domain you’ve chosen for your email address; if it's a fake or misspelled domain, it will impact the reputation of your account. (Pay close attention! Common mistakes include gmai.coml, hotmail.comg, ganil.com, yahoo.comx, gmail.coma, or hormail.con).

Special Considerations for Gmail

The Gmail email platform has some specific nuances. Please consider these two factors to ensure your emails directed to Gmail domains are received perfectly:

  • Size Limit: Gmail trims emails exceeding 102 KB.
  • Optimization: Reduce code and content size to avoid trimming.

How to avoid Gmail's Promotions Tab

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Gmail's Promotions Tab is not the same as a spam folder

We must be crystal-clear, Gmail's Promotions Tab can be a good place to show your emails and generate more open rate and engagement with your brand, taking advantage of this tab's visual options to attract users attention.

Anyway, if you prefer your email campaigns arrive at the main tab, there are several tips to follow below. Remember that to try to cheat Gmail's algorithms can adversely affect the delivery of your emails into a spam folder. Please note, Gmail's algorithms are specific for each recipient so if your email arrives at the Primary inbox for one recipient, it doesn't mean the same result for the next recipients.

  • Personalize your email by greeting your recipients by name: "Hello {{username}}..." -> "Hello Michael..."
  • Do not use a generic reply-to address (sales@, support@) and never use @no-reply. You can use instead a personal reply-to address (yourname@)
  • Keep images to a minimum
  • Use one or two links within your email (the unsubscribe link is not counted as a link)
  • Authenticate your sending domain with SPF & DKIM records (More info)

How to optimize email delivery (Gmail's Promotions Tab)

Gmail's Promotions Tab is the space to receive the marketing emails. The users who previously have accepted your email marketing, are expecting to receive your emails inside this tab. So it is not wrong your emails arrive into his tab and even you can take advantage of its visual interface.

Email annotations let you include images, deals, expiration dates and other offers to get a great impact. You can include the email code in your campaigns to add these elements. For this you will use our html option and copy the code you need.