Email Deliverability… $h!t’s About To Hit The Fan!

We are just under two weeks away from when the updated “Email Sender Requirements” for Google and Yahoo go into full effect.

Are you ready?

There’s still time if you haven’t tidied up your shop. Here’s a quick reminder of the new requirements.

1. SPF and DKIM email authentication for your domain must be valid.

2. DMARC email authentication is set up for your sending domain.

3. Spam Rates must be under 0.3%. The industry standard has always been 0.10%, so they are giving a little wiggle room. If you’re under 0.2% you are safe but I shoot to stay under 0.1%.

4. One-click unsubscribe button and a visible unsubscribe link in the message body.

Make sure you don’t get $h!t on your hands by following the details below.

Google Postmaster Tools

You should already have google postmaster tools setup. If not, do it right this second by clicking here.

1) Add Your Mailing Domain

First thing you have to do is add your mailing domain. The domain that is used by your email marketing platform to send your emails.

It isn’t always just your website domain. It could be a subdomain like email.yourdomain.com instead of yourdomain.com.

Click the red plus (+) button to add your domain.

2) Check Your Sender Compliance Status

When you’re logged into postmaster tools you can visit this link - https://postmaster.google.com/v2/sender_compliance which will show you the current status of your mailing domain.

It is also currently found at the top of the page in the text notification as seen in the screenshot above.

Now simply select your domain from the dropdown and you’ll see a page similar to the one below.

If you are set up correctly, you will see a green checkmark with the word Compliant next to each of the requirements.

The one compliance check not integrated with the dashboard is the one-click unsubscribe requirement which I will show you how to verify next.

3) Verify One-Click Unsubscribe

If you are using a reputable Email Service Provider (ESP), the one-click unsubscribe should already be implemented.

We can easily check by viewing a recent email that you sent from the platform.

Here’s a quick video to walk you through the process.

Below is a screenshot that highlights the List-Unsubscribe code that is provided for this exact newsletter sent via Beehiiv.

If you verified your List-Unsubscribe you should be all set.

Yahoo Sender Hub

This is relatively new as Yahoo now has a dashboard for you to verify your sending domains are set up as well.

Click Here to access the Yahoo Sender hub and set up your account.

Now add your sending domains and click the verify link to confirm your domain.

Once verified it should look like this:

If you’ve passed verification on both Google Postmasters and Yahoo Sender Hub you should be all set for the updated Sender Requirements.

Now congratulate yourself as you should now be avoiding all the $h!t that’s about to hit the fan.

Clear sending,
Chris Miquel

Follow me on Twitter: @miqchris