In Spring 2024, the big email providers (including Google & Yahoo) made some huge changes that can impact your email deliverability.
The short of it is that they’re doing it to reduce Spam messages and people pretending to be you, which is always a good thing.
But as someone doing email marketing – regardless of the size of your email list – it means that there are some important steps you’ll need to do in order to have your emails show up in your subscribers’ inboxes instead of your emails going to spam or being flat-out blocked.
I’m providing information to the best of my understanding and updating this post as I learn more or find more resources. If you have any questions or concerns, I recommend you reach out directly to your email marketing software.
This post contains some affiliate links. Read my disclosure for more information.
What is email deliverability?
Email deliverability is the ability for your email sent through your email marketing software to get delivered to your subscribers’ inboxes. (And yes, that includes the promotions folder.)
When you send email through an email marketing software such as ConvertKit, you want to make sure your emails don’t end up in the Spam folder or get prevented from being delivered at all.
How to improve email deliverability
I look at email deliverability in two ways:
- The actual technical steps you need to take to properly set up your email marketing software
- Email marketing strategies & best practices that incorporate being a good human
Let’s start with the technical steps. And a quick disclaimer that I’m providing this information to the best of my knowledge. The information provided in this checklist does not constitute professional advice. You assume all risks associated with implementing the steps in this blog post.
Use an email address that matches your domain
You cannot use a free Gmail or Yahoo account to send emails through your email marketing software.
Meaning, if you’re using something like ConvertKit, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Flodesk, Mailerlite, Constant Contact, etc – and you currently use a free Gmail or Yahoo email address (such as business@gmail.com) – you’ll need to get an email address with your domain (such as hi@business.com).
(If you have an paid email address through Google Workspace that is @yourdomain.com, you should be good. But keep reading!)
That’s because you don’t own the domains @gmail.com or @yahoo.com and prove you are who you say you are, which brings us to the next important piece of information.
Remove inactive or cold subscribers
If you haven’t done list cleanup in awhile, do it as soon as possible! (This is something I recommend that everyone do regularly before all these changes came.)
Google & Yahoo are deleting abandoned accounts, and you don’t want a large chunk of your emails suddenly bouncing.
The more subscribers not engaging with your emails (opening, clicking, forwarding, etc.) or bouncing, the more negatively it will impact your domain’s reputation.
Generally I recommend starting by reengaging those subscribers identified as inactive / cold by your email marketing software. That means you send them about 2-3 emails to see if they want to stay on your email list. Liz Wilcox has some templates in her Email Marketing Membership to help guide you on what to say and how to approach it.
Here are links to help articles based on which email marketing softwares you use. Some email marketing softwares do not make this easy. I’ve done it it Mailchimp for clients and it’s clunky (but doable!). If you use Squarespace’s email marketing function, it’s basically impossible.
Don’t see your email marketing software listed? If you search “[name of your email marketing software] inactive subscribers” you should find an article with more specific information and directions on how to do it on your email marketing software.
Check to see if your domain is already protected
Dmarcian has a free tool to see if you have DMARC, SPF, and DKIM set up. You likely won’t yet have DMARC set up, you might already have SPF & DKIM.
And yes, I hate acronyms as much as you, but what they stand for isn’t that important. What you do need to know is that these are the three records you’ll need to have set up to prove that your emails are coming from your domain are in fact coming from your business (and not someone pretending to be sending an emails from your domain.)
Authenticate your sender domain
In short, you need to prove you are who you say you are. Google has two broken it down into two requirements:
- Everyone who sends bulk emails (does email marketing through an email marketing software such as ConvertKit)
- Anyone who sends 5,000+ bulk emails a day*
*On ConvertKit’s podcast, Deliverability Defined, they clarified to say “5,000 emails in a day,” although this is Google’s specifications In short, even if your list size is considerably smaller (like mine), you should still make these updates.
How and where you do this depends on where your domain is hosted. (But before you do this step, make sure you do a list cleanup first!)
For example, I have a self-hosted WordPress website, and my emails come through my domain, so I have to make some updates on my cPanel. If you have a WordPress website, I recommend reaching out to your host.
If you have a Squarespace, Wix, Kajabi, or Showit website, or you have a custom domain email address through Google Workspace, authentication will look different for you. I recommend reaching out to them directly.
Here’s resources on authenticating your domain by email marketing software:
- ConvertKit
- ActiveCampaign
- Mailerlite
- Flodesk
- Mailchimp – There’s also some helpful links for doing this setup based on common hosts providers, including Squarespace, Wix, Bluehost, Namecheap, GodDaddy, etc. (And here’s how to do it on Showit.)
- Constant Contact
It’s important to note that you’ll also have to set up a DKIM record for each place that you send emails through. For example, if you send emails through a CRM such as Honeybook that come from your custom domain, or if you use Google Workspace, you’ll need to follow their instructions for setting up DKIM records. That’s beyond the scope of what I can do with this blog post, but here’s an article from Google that explains a bit more about that.
Set up Google Postmasters tools
While your email marketing software can track people who mark your emails a Spam for most email providers, unfortunately it cannot do that for Gmail users. Set up Google Postmasters tools so you can track spam complaints from there.
Note that you’ll have to first set up Google Console before you can set up Postmasters Tools.
Email your most engaged subscribers first
Depending on your list size, instead of diving right in to emailing everyone on your list once you’ve authenticated your domain, you might need to adjust your email marketing strategy as you build up your domain’s “reputation”.
You can do this by identifying your most engaged subscribers first – the people who are opening, clicking on, and replying to your emails – and sending them an email that encourages them to engage with that email.
Best practices that will help with deliverability
Get consent – Add people who signed up for your email list or who gave you permission to add them. Full stop.
Set clear expectations – When someone opts-in to your email list, let them know what’s going to happen next on your thank you page. Pretty much always, it’s to go check their inbox for an email from you. In those initial emails, let them know when and how frequently they can expect to hear from you.
Give people the ability to opt out. Whether it’s signing up for a freebie or when your in the midst of a launch, giving people to opt out of those emails will prevent people from receiving unwanted emails that they ignore, report as Spam, or unsubscribe from.
Deliver on your promises. If you say your email content is about a particular topic, stick to it.
Basically what it all boils down to: be a thoughtful and considerate business owner who recognizes there are humans receiving your emails, all with different needs.
Extra Resources on Email Deliverability
Below is a collection of other documents as it relates to deliverability as I find out more. Want to receive updates as I make changes to this post? Sign up for my newsletter.
- New Gmail protections for a safer, less spammy inbox (article from Google)
- Email sender guidelines (support Doc from Google)
- Sender best practices (article from Yahoo, which actually has a great breakdown of some best practices)
- Deliverability explained (from ConvertKit)
- New Requirements from Gmail & Yahoo (podcast episode from Deliverability Defined)
- Understanding Permissions & Deliverability (free 30-minute Hubspot course – you’ll need to create an account. Doesn’t get into the updates but it gives a helpful overview of email deliverability overall and best practices)
- Google’s most significant update in 20 years (Free webinar that did a great job breaking it all down. )
- Dmarcian (check to see if your domain is authenticated)
