As of February 1st 2024, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail are introducing a new set of requirements that senders must meet in order for their bulk email to be delivered as expected to their subscribers. Emails that do not meet the new best pracrice requirements will be sent to the "Junk" and "SPAM" and/or these emails will be rejected outright. 

If a sender does not meet the new requirements, they will start to see temporary errors occurring on a small percentage of their non-compliant mail. In April 2024, a small percentage of the mail will be rejected and the percentage will gradually increase over time. Slowly the rejection rate will increase, and customers may experience a higher bouncer rate. 

What are the new requirements?

1 - Authentication Settings

You need to check your DNS settings on your domain record (e.g. GoDaddy or your domain host) to see if your authentication settings are up to date with the latest best practice requirements. These requirements are all in place to make sure the emails you send are verified to be from your organization.

The best practice requirements are:

• DKIM - DomainKeys Identified Mail Standard
• DMARC - Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance
• SPF - Sender Policy Framework

If you use Keela’s SendGrid integration to send your emails, you already have DKIM and SPF authenticated. You will need to check and authenticate DMARC. 

If you don't use Keela's SendGrid integration and you use our Keela provided email to send your emails from Keela, all three requirements are up to date. 

2 - One-click Unsubscribe

There will need to be a one-click unsubscribe link on all bulk emails → don’t worry, Keela has you covered on this. We are working on a one-click unsubscribe solution at the moment and we will keep you in the loop.

Note: this only applies to bulk senders!

Who do these new requirements apply to?

The updated requirements affect two categories of senders. The first set applies to “all email senders”, while the second set includes additional criteria specifically for those who send more than 5,000 emails from the same domain to Gmail accounts within a 24-hour period—referred to as 'bulk senders.'

What do I need to do?

You will need to check if your DKIM, DMARC and SPF records are up to date with the new requirements. 

How do I check these records?

You can use MX Toolbox - a free tool to check their SPF, DKIM and DMARC settings. You can access here: https://mxtoolbox.com/NetworkTools.aspx

Checking DKIM 

If you are using Keela Sendgrid integration to send your emails, DKIM is already set up and authenticated.

If it says ‘_domainkey’ in the integration settings, it means it is already authenticated.

You do not need to do anything here. 

Checking DMARC

You will need to go to MX Tool Box to check your DMARC configuration:

If your DMARC is verified, it will look like this: 

If DMARC is not present, it will show like this: 

How do we add a DMARC to our DNS settings?

If you do not have DMARC on your DNS settings, as per the new requirements from Yahoo! Mail and Gmail, you will need to add them to your DNS settings. 

If the website MX tools does not show your DMARC, you will want to go ahead and create a DMARC record to add it to your DNS Settings. 

We recommend that you use this website to create your DMARC record. Once you have it, you can go ahead and add it to your DNS records on your domain host. 

See it in action here: 

Checking SPF

Using MX Tool Box as well, you can go ahead and check for your SPF record. 

In order to look for your domain and the SPF record you would need to use Keela-emails.yourdomain

For example: Keela-emails.mykeela.co

Note: if you are using Keela's SendGrid connection or using Keela's generated email for your organization, the SPF record is already done on our end. 

If you have made any changes to your DNS records provided by Keela for the SendGrid integration, you will need to make changes to your SPF. 

If you have any other questions regarding these changes, feel free to send us an email to support@keela.com.

FAQs

How Do I Check My DNS Records to Ensure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Are Added?

You can check your DNS records here: MX Tool Box.

Who do these new requirements apply to?

The updated requirements affect two categories of senders. The first set applies to all email senders, while the second set includes additional criteria specifically for those who send more than 5,000 emails from the same domain to Gmail accounts within a 24-hour period—referred to as 'bulk senders.'

What happens if we don’t comply?

If your sender domain fails to meet these requirements, you may notice temporary errors affecting a small percentage of your bulk email. Over time, email rejection rates could increase, leading to a higher bounce rate.

How soon do we need to comply?

• February 2024 – No major penalties at the start. Bulk emailers will get temporary errors on a small percentage of emails they send that don’t meet the requirements. Google will notify the sender of the error (along with an error code).
• April 2024 – Google will begin rejecting a percentage of bulk senders’ emails that don’t meet the guidelines. They’ll gradually increase the rejection rate over time.
• June 1, 2024 – Bulk senders must have implemented one-click unsubscribe (being built into Keela)

Who are considered "bulk senders"?

Bulk senders are considered the ones that are going to be sending over 5,000 emails per day.