New Email Rules and Why You Should Care

Very soon, on February 1, 2024, Yahoo and Google Gmail are putting into place new rules to better protect their users from receiving so much spam and malicious email in their inboxes. The reason why this is so important to understand is that these new rules will impact anyone who sends emails in bulk – which, if you are a digital or affiliate marketer, you probably are (or will be in the future). 

Once these rules are in effect, all bulk email senders will need to comply with specific requirements for emails to even be delivered to recipients inboxes. Therefore, it is definitely worthwhile to make sure that your marketing business complies with their new rules, otherwise those cleverly-crafted emails you spent so much time on to send to leads and customers will head straight to the Spam folder, if they are even delivered at all!

Google and Yahoo specifically are making it so you cannot send emails using a gmail or yahoo address from anywhere other than the gmail or yahoo email clients. That means if you are using a @gmail.com or @yahoo.com for your marketing emails, they will no longer allow any auto-responder or email tool you are using to deliver your email campaigns using those email addresses (because they are not originated from their email client). 

And really, Gmail and Yahoo and other similar free email addresses are best used for your personal correspondence. Even without these new rules coming into play, there are some good reasons you need a professional/custom email address anyway:

• Emails from professional email addresses are more likely to be delivered as they are deemed more trustworthy by email providers like Yahoo and Gmail.
• It builds recognition and brand reputation with your audience. Your recipients can recognize who the email is from even without opening it and they can feel more secure about the source of the message
• It helps to build your “sender” reputation – you may not have even realized it, but email clients score emails you send and if they get lots of complaints about the emails you’re sending (meaning people are flagging your mail as spam or not reading them) then your reputation will be affected. On the other hand, if you send quality emails and people seem to like receiving them (because they read them and don’t complain) then you get a better rep

Fortunately, there are a few steps you can take to make sure this does not slow down your marketing efforts.

Step 1: Get yourself a professional email address with your own domain name

So instead of sending your emails from bobsblog@gmail.com, you can purchase your own domain and use it instead. So now your emails could come from bob@bobsblog.com (insert whatever your own custom domain would be of course)

If you do not yet have your own domain name, you can get them fairly cheaply at places like Namecheap.com (this is one I have personally used myself). GoDaddy is another popular choice, but you can just search “purchase a domain name” and get many choices and really it’s a matter of personal preference who you purchase one from. 

Here are my tips to choosing a domain name:

• A .com domain name is still the most preferred. It just feels extra fancy to own your own .com name, but if you have a perfect name in mind and the .com is not available, it’s not the end of the world. I would just caution you from too foreign of a choice… most people are familiar with .net, .inc or .co at this point, but a .xyz or .today might make people pause.
• Consider using your given name… I chose not to do this because Acasha might be hard for people to remember how to spell. But if your name is more recognizable, a domain like “MakingProfitWithRachel.com” could be just right!
• You can get domain names for mere dollars a year; I do not recommend paying more than $20/yr on your new domain name. It’s probably not worth it. 
• Consider the future when choosing your domain name. You may want your niche to be focused on digital marketing today, but what if you want to pivot and add finance education in the future? You could buy a new domain for your new niche, true – but you could also find a name that would be more like a general “umbrella” and less limiting in its focus.

Once you have your domain name, you will have to do an additional step to set up your new professional email address, and those steps will differ depending on where you purchased your domain from. In my experience, they all will have helpful guides on how to do this. For example, if you purchased from NameCheap, you can use their instructions here (scroll down to “How to Create a Business email”)

Step 2: Authenticate your professional email address with a custom DKIM

DKIM? Ok, I know, it’s starting to sound really scary and technical. Bear with me! Think of DKIM as a digital signature for your new email address, as a way to help prove to email clients like Yahoo and Google that you really are the one to send the email and that no one else has intercepted and changed the email along the way. It’s a security measure.

Unfortunately, the specific how to do this will also differ depending on what service you are using for your email campaigns / autoresponder. I use Aweber currently, and they outline this step here. If you are using something else, I encourage you to make use of their support desk to help you with this step. Given that their business is to help you send emails, you can bet they are going to want to help you do that successfully!

Step 3: Set up a DNS Record for your DMARC Policy

Yikes, I know. I’m throwing more scary acronyms out there. But I believe in you – you can do this! A DMARC policy is another step to help authenticate your emails and make sure that no one else can fake your email address and protect your email sending reputation from being harmed by malicious actors. 

This step is again something that can be done thru NameCheap or wherever else you purchased your domain name from and have it registered. If you login to your account and navigate to their control panel, you’ll want to find your domain and identity where you can update your “DNS” Settings. 

You should have an option to “create a new record.” And you will want it to look something like this:

Type: TXT 

Name: _dmarc

Value: v=DMARC1; p=none; pct=100; rua=mailto:bob@bobsblog.com

But you’ll just want to change that part in bold to whatever your professional email address is, and this will be where you will receive DMARC reports from email providers.

Step 4: Verify You Did It Correctly

After waiting a bit, I recommend at least an hour, your can visit https://dmarcian.com/dmarc-inspector/ 

Type your custom domain name and hit enter. If all is well, you will see a message that says your new DMARC record is valid. 

And that’s it, you are now legitimized in the eyes of email providers and better protected from the new rules coming into enforcement. 

Now, you are still going to want to take good care of your sender reputation. So if you have a large email list with a lot of people on it that haven’t opened an email from you in a very long time, it might be a good idea to do some housekeeping on that list. Also make sure that you are making it easy for people to unsubscribe from your email list with an easy to find link in your emails. 

And my final tip – make sure your emails are worth opening! After all, you won’t even have a chance to sell anyone your offer if they aren’t even interested in reading the email you sent to them. Lead with value; make sure your emails are informative, helpful, or entertaining and your recipients will keep coming back to you for the latest and greatest. I like to use myself as a guidepost – would this be an email I would want to receive or be interested in opening?

That’s it for today. I really hope this helps not only explain why these updates are important but also how to adapt to the new changes. Let me know in the comments below!

With love,