Google & Yahoo's Email Best Practices 2024

Starting February 1, 2024, new policies from Google and Yahoo could impact any company sending more than 5K emails per day from one domain. This policy represents a growing trend towards sophisticated email management being a requirement for all businesses. 

Most of the requirements Google outlines relate to common email best practices. For a simplified assessment of your compliance, Resquared Recommends to check:

1. That DMARC, DKIM, and SPF are set up properly
2. Check the percentage of emails coming from your domain that are marked as SPAM according to Google.

Both of these criteria can be checked with Google Postmaster Tools

In addition, we recommend you review the following “best practices” for email domain management. Resquared recommends all companies consider setting up separate email domains that are specifically dedicated to sending sales emails. This separates and isolates any reputation issues to these non-critical email domains. 

Even before the new Google and Yahoo changes, email domain reputation has been one of the most challenging and technical aspects of outbound sales. 15% of all emails don’t make the inbox, and it’s even harder for salespeople sending cold email.

In order to set up and maintain these separate domains, organizations must:

1. Authenticate Emails: Implement email authentication protocols like DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), SPF (Sender Policy Framework), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance). These ensure that the emails are genuinely coming from your domain and not being spoofed, which helps maintain your domain reputation.
2. IP Warming: Gradually increase the volume of emails sent from a new IP address. This "warms up" the IP and helps establish it as a legitimate source of emails rather than a potential source of spam.
3. Maintain Clean Email Lists: Regularly update and clean your email lists to avoid sending emails to invalid addresses. This can reduce bounce rates and spam reports, both of which can harm your domain reputation and deliverability.
4. Monitor Deliverability and Open Rates: Regularly monitor and analyze the deliverability rates, open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates. These metrics can provide insights into email performance and domain reputation.
5. Content Quality: Send valuable content that recipients find interesting and relevant. This can reduce the likelihood of your emails being marked as spam.
6. Avoid Spam Triggers: Be aware of and avoid elements that may trigger spam filters, such as certain keywords, large attachments, or all-caps subject lines.
7. Manage Complaint Rates: Keep complaint rates low by sending relevant, valuable content to engaged recipients.
8. Have a Dedicated IP: If your volume is sufficient, having a dedicated IP address for sending emails can help maintain a consistent sending reputation.
9. Switch Addresses if Necessary: If an email address gets blacklisted, you might have to switch to a new one. In this case, start with a warm-up period to gradually build up the email volume.

The good news for all Resquared clients is that Resquared automatically handles steps 3, 5, and 6, by cleaning all data in the platform (above 98% verification rate) and rigorously testing all templates and playbooks provided to clients.

If you need help or custom guidance on any of these steps, please contact your Resquared customer success point of contact!