You might have heard of all this Google and Yahoo email requirement stuff. And it might seem scary. While not a deliverability expert, let me explain what’s up and give you some recommendations on getting it all set up so the Internet Gods let your emails pass.
Need help understanding the new email requirements? Sign up for this quick and thorough class by the only deliverability pro I trust: https://members.cherylrerick.com/~access/a15c4196f/
Blog post on DKIM, SPF, and DMARC
Liz’s Email Marketing Membership
Liz’s Free Welcome Sequence
The Email Sound Booth Facebook Group
Liz’s Kit [Convertkit] Affiliate Link
Transcript
Hey friend, this is the fresh princess of email marketing. You are listening to episode 22 of the email sound booth podcast, lucky me. Now today I want to do, I don’t know, sort of an easy to understand explanation of all this email authentication, all these email requirements, uh, stuff that was put into place in early and mid 2024.
So if you’re listening to this and you’re just now hearing about it, sorry to say, stay tuned. Say it with love. You’re a little behind on the track, but don’t worry. I, again, I’m going to give you an easy to understand, um, explanation of all this. It’s essential. You have this stuff in place in order to send emails and actually have them delivered to your subscribers inbox.
Okay. So this is, if you don’t have this stuff in, you ain’t getting through. It’s not even about the spam folder. It’s about. Was this actually delivered or not? All right. So again, this email authentication stuff is real and we’ve really got it done. If we want to use email as a marketing tool from right this second and beyond, you might’ve already heard some of the terms SPF, DKIM, DMARC, don’t panic.
This is just some techie stuff that we’re going to put into place to verify that we are legit email senders. And because I know you’re too legit to quit, I know you’re going to get this done. Side note, before I get into it, if you listen to this, or if you’ve already heard about this stuff and you’re feeling like I can’t do this, I have a couple, uh, recommendations for like done for you, right?
So these people will do it. Their names are Ariel and Cassette. I will put their links in the show notes. I’m not sure about the price. Of course, this is a podcast. Uh, they might up their price, but they are incredibly reasonable. So let me give you a quick rundown here. Back in October ish 2023, Google and Yahoo, they announced publicly that they were going to start implementing some new requirements for bulk senders.
Bulk senders are you. You’re sending one email to many people. Even if you’ve only got seven people on your list, you are a bulk sender. Okay. It might sound crazy, But this is actually a good thing, right? Raise your hand if you have over 10, 000 unread emails in your inbox, right? Uh, or if you’ve ever abandoned an inbox all because of spam, right?
You literally said, I’m not even logging in. I’m just going to start over. These new requirements are to ensure that kind of thing stops happening. From an email reader perspective, someone who has an inbox, this is incredible. News, right? But from a bulk sender point of view, uh, we’re a little less than enthusiastic over here, right?
But that’s only because we now have to just Jump through some technical hoops when we’re used to kind of skirting around them, but just like in sync this, I promise you, you can do it and it will be worth it. Email is too valuable to let a few, you know, techie pieces of code stop you from reaching your potential customers, right?
Right? The answer is yes, Liz. Of course, it’s too valuable, right? Another way of thinking about it is like this. You know when they started making cars, right? Cars were invented. Anyone who could afford one could buy one and start driving down the road, right? And while that was great for a while, it wasn’t so great for the roads.
Eventually, there became too many cars on the road and the government had to step in and and Create licenses, right? Say, hey, you need a license to do this. So nowadays with this email stuff, it’s kind of the same. Nowadays, you’ve got to have a license to drive a car, right? This is kind of like, you have to have a license to email like people, the internet gods, so to speak, the inbox hosts like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, those are the big players.
They need to see your license, so to speak. They need to verify. You. Okay. So think about this with email, right? When the internet was created, you know, only a small percentage of the world was using email, but now it’s a little out of control. As we mentioned, we’ve abandoned inboxes. We’ve got thousands of unread emails on the internet highway.
There’s so many accidents, aka spam that’s jamming up our inbox from what we actually want to see, right? Okay. So the big players, I already mentioned Google, Yahoo, Microsoft hasn’t publicly said this, but Microsoft has always been doing this. Uh, you know, they’re telling bulk senders, we need to see some ID here.
Again, this is a good thing, just like it’s a good thing to have a licensed driver on the road. It’s good for all of us bulk senders to be licensed, so to speak. To be able to say, yep, this is me. Let me pass, right? Uh, okay, so, think of it like a driver’s license. We got that, right? We want to be official, certified, stamped.
Woohoo! And that’s what all this DKIM, DMARC, SPF is. It’s going to certify and stamp us, okay? So here’s an overview of the Google and Yahoo requirements as we know it. Uh, just three things will be required to authenticate your emails. Yeah, it’s a bit technical, but no, it’s not impossible. And again, email is too valuable to not get this done, right?
Now, if you want to dive a little deeper, into this. I’m about to explain SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. If you need a little bit more explanation, if you’re still feeling like, oh Liz, I kind of don’t get that, I really want you, and I’m going to put this in the show notes, to check out Cheryl Rarick’s full hour webinar on the subject.
She’s got stick figures, she’s got visuals, uh, if you’re a visual learner and you really want to understand I’m going to put that in the show notes. It’s free, you can check it out. So SPF stands for, and you don’t have to know this, you just have to know you have to get it done, but for those of us who like all the details, this stands for Sender Policy Framework.
But SPF reminds me of sunscreen, right? So it’s like putting this in place just tells the internet gods what sources can send email on your behalf. Which, by the way, might not make sense, but your email service provider, if you’re using something like Kit, ActiveCampaign, Flowdesk, they are actually sending emails on your behalf, right?
You log into their account and they send the email for you, right? So SPF, putting on that sunscreen, so to speak, tells the internet gods, tells Microsoft, Yahoo, etc., Hey, you know what? Kit can send emails for me, right? So anyone without the SPF on, the internet gods are gonna burn them, right? Just like if you don’t have your SPF sunscreen on, you’re gonna get burned.
The internet gods ain’t gonna send nothing pretending to be you. So why is this so important to get done ASAP? Again, you are sending emails from different places. I send emails from kit, but it’s likely you might send them from a few different places. Maybe you send them from, you know, you get a link, somebody books your podcast, your podcast calendar link is sending emails on your behalf.
If you work with clients, maybe you’re using Calendly, Calendly, right? They’re sending emails on your behalf. So you want to make sure those are included in your SPF to they get through the inbox, right? Okay, so that was SPF. Put your sunscreen on, you don’t want to get burned, okay? DKIM, literally, you’ll never have to remember this, but I’ll tell you anyway, it stands for Domain Keys Identified Mail.
Again, my super smart deliverability friend, Cheryl Rarick, she explains it this way. It’s like sealing the letter inside an envelope. So. Okay, so it’s like when you lick the stamp you put it on or I’m sorry you lick the envelope you close it, right? Having this in place Verifies that nothing has been tampered with when it hits the inbox when it gets to the inbox, right?
I’m sending the email it gets to the inbox They’re going to search for this DKIM the internet gods are going to search for it to make sure the seal is not broken, so to speak. This is so important to get done right away because the Internet’s gods are just telling you this is a new requirement. I’ve said that before, haven’t I?
Alright, so DMARC. Again, you don’t really need to know what this stands for, but I’ll tell you anyway. Domain Based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance. I tried to warn you, you don’t really need to know this. It just makes it sound even scarier. So this is basically just a policy you set up to tell the internet god’s minions what to do when an email doesn’t pass those first few steps we already covered, right?
So this is like a double, triple check, hey, something is weird about this email, what do you want us to do about it, right? So you can mark it as nothing. Just send it anyway. You can mark it as quarantine, which means mark this email as spam and just put it in the spam folder, or you can mark it as rejected, right?
If it doesn’t pass those first two tests, you tell the internet gods. Hey, I want this to be rejected and rejected means it won’t land in the inbox anyway. Again, I highly recommend Cheryl Rarick’s first, I’m sorry, free one hour long webinar on this to really really dive deep into it and she even offers suggestions on which one you want to pick the nothing quarantine or reject, right?
Hey, give me one sec I need to drink some water. I guess I could pause or edit this podcast, but I’m But I kind of want you to know, like, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Just keep going. So how do we authenticate our emails? And y’all, I’m talking to y’all. I said y’all when there’s only one of you listening, right?
Like, I’m sure you’re not in a group setting listening to this and taking notes with each other. Anyway, listen, I am by no means an expert when it comes to authenticating your emails. I’m just putting this all together for you because I know it is that easy. Important. Okay. I want you to have all this information in one place and really the expert here is Cheryl Rarick and if you’re looking for a DIY solution like something You can do yourself, but you need a guide.
I really recommend Her deliverability workshops. That is really where it’s at. They’re on demand videos short and actionable. You get access to a Q& A bank, which at this point in the game is probably really, really robust, right? This has been around a while. Like I said, and not to, you know, be a scaredy cat, but you’re behind if you haven’t done this yet.
And you can also submit your own questions to Cheryl. She really, I don’t know, she walks through, this is like baby steps. She will really help you make the baby steps possible. Okay. I want you to feel confident that your emails are going to get sent so you can actually make money from them. And Cheryl’s Deliverability Unboxed is where it’s at.
That’s the name of the workshop. Deliverability Unboxed. Okay? Excuse me. So you might have also heard that, uh, this doesn’t really count unless you’re sending 5, 000 emails. So you got me. You’re likely, you know, if you’re brand new to this, maybe not sending 5, 000 emails a day, but unfortunately Um, I want you to, I want you to send those 5, 000 emails a day, and once your email list starts growing, you’re going to hit that number really, really quickly.
And that 5, 000 emails a day requirement is only kind of like half true, and who knows for how long, right? Here is the real tea, okay baby? Number one, Yahoo! itself has stated all senders. That means you, even if you’re sending one email a day, if you’re a bulk sender, you’re sending from an email service provider like Kit, you, you know, this does not apply.
And chances are you are sending to people with Yahoo emails, right? Of course, I think Google has something like 1. 8 billion Gmail users, but Yahoo still has something like two or three hundred million daily, uh, inbox users. Okay. So the real tea is this 5, 000 email requirement thing is BS. Uh, number two, Microsoft has been suspiciously quiet this whole time, right?
We’re talking about Yahoo and Google announcing this My friend, let me tell you, Microsoft is likely been requiring all of this the whole time and that might be the reason why some of your metrics are down or why you go to spam often. Microsoft has always been super stringent Um, and so they’ve probably been putting you in spam if you don’t have this, right?
Microsoft is like the definition of does not play. Like, they are not playing around. And of course, number three, like, I’m not a fortune teller, but I do predict the 5, 000 emails a day thing that googled, uh, I predict it’s gonna get stricter. I believe this is the first uh, iteration of the new rules and, you know, in the next year or two, every bulk sender, that’s you.
Remember? We’ll absolutely have to have all of these things in place. My theory is, you know, most companies, they roll out new features and requirements to a segment of their users before another thing happens, right? It’s like when Instagram created like IGTV, it was, it rolled out to just as a segment, right?
Um, so, and then it was available to everyone. So, Loads of people might wait until they see that they can no longer send emails and then you’ll be kind of screwed, right? Does that make sense? So I’m not saying any of this to make you panic. It’s just matter of fact stuff. Policies and requirements change all the time.
It’s our job as users and especially as business owners to simply abide so we can keep playing this email game. Okay. And honestly, this is going to thin out all the competition and the junk in our inboxes so it’s a win win. Let me sum it up for you. Email is too valuable for you to put at risk, my boo boo.
You have got to get this done to email with any effectiveness. And by effectiveness, I mean, do you want to get through to the inbox? to your subscribers or not. Lucky for us, it’s just three things. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. You can hire a service provider. I’m going to put a couple in the show notes to do it for you.
Or, you can, uh, get a DIY solution with Cheryl Rarick. Of course, I’m going to put her free webinar. up in the show notes and her deliverability unboxed. Everyone that I’m recommending is A I would book them by get this done now. Okay. The last thing I want to say is you’ve got this. Okay. You’ve got this.
All right. That’s it for today. As always, come back and share in the reviews how this podcast episode helped you today. Remember, I’m Liz Wilcox, you are awesome, and I’ll meet you on the next episode of the email sound booth.
