2024. The year when marketers and brands will actually start taking Email Deliverability seriously. Who’s ready for the new Email requirements coming in February?

This will be a game changer and will impact email marketing just like iOS14 disrupted paid media. But if you start in February or wait until your campaigns are ending up in spam, you're gonna be too late.

Let’s first understand what all this means - because, honestly - not everyone is a deliverability expert.

❓ Why is this happening?

You can thank spammy senders and aggressive unethical marketers over the years. This is an effort to enforce email standards for a better and more secure experience for the user.

🧐 Who will these requirements affect?

If you’re a “bulk sender” sending 5K or more emails to Google/Yahoo accounts per day. Think you’re not a bulk sender? Even with a moderately sized email list under 20,000 contacts, your account may fall in this bracket as this includes Flows, Campaigns and Transactional emails as well (like your order and shipping confirmation emails).

Even if you’re not considered a bulk sender and don’t regularly send 5K emails or more a day—you must adhere to some new requirements like keeping spam complaints under 0.3%.

📩 What are these major email deliverability changes exactly?
We have 3 key requirements:

1️⃣ Changes to the email infrastructure (AKA stronger Authentication)
**Start this process right now if you’re a bulk sender**

Have you heard of DMARC, SPF and DKIM? If this is gibberish to you, let me explain. These are simply email validation systems designed to protect your domain from unauthorized use.
Step 2 will require you to transition to a Dedicated Sending Domain which will allow you to protect and enhance your sender reputation.

This is a fairly simple and quick transition, that means:
= a more secure email account, more control
= with proper management, your emails actually reach your subscribers inbox
= your deliverability can also tank very quickly if you don’t follow a strict and clean segmentation strategy.

2️⃣ One Click Unsubscribe
Looks like Gmail inbox already started implementing this recently. Overall, users should be able to unsubscribe from unwanted emails without any hassle. And it should just take one click.

3️⃣ New Spam Rates threshold (for non-bulk senders too!)
The golden metric starting February 2024? Stay below 0.2% Spam Complaint per 24 hour period – 0.3% will get you blocked.

> That includes Campaigns AND Flows.
> You can have a 0.15% at the total send, but actually 0.4% on Gmail; in that case your Gmail delivery will tank.
> You can use Google’s Postmaster Tools to monitor your spam complaint rates.

Overall:
✅ LIST CLEANING
✅ PROPER SEGMENTATION
✅ ENGAGED SENDING
will take a whole new meaning, and we’ll all need to step up our game, moving beyond the 60 / 90-day engagement metrics.

More insights to come!