🚨Important read, there are changes you will need to make to your Connect account by 1st of February 2024🚨

Google has announced that starting on the 1st of February 2024, Gmail, Yahoo and industry partners will require senders to authenticate their emails, allow for easy unsubscription and stay under a reported spam threshold. Failure to do this will see messages sent to Gmail addresses fail to deliver.

Quick overview of the new Gmail requirements

By 1st of February 2024, Gmail, Yahoo and many other email providers will start to require that all senders:

1. Authenticate emails using DKIM
   DKIM is an email authentication method that ensures someone is not impersonating the sender. Essentially, it enforces that the email was sent by john@example.com and no one else.
   
   Read our Email Authentication and Delivery guide on how to setup SPF, Bounce, DKIM and DMARC for your domain so that all emails sent will be authenticated and in-line with Gmail's requirements.
   
   
2. Enable easy unsubscription
   One-click unsubscribes have always been available within our platform. As well, we automatically attach additional headers (as required by Gmail) to allow users to unsubscribe using the Gmail interface. 
   
   
   
   This functionality is already part of our core delivery functionality. All campaigns sent will contain the "List-Unsubscribe" headers.
   
   
   
3. Ensure you are sending wanted email
   This is a bit of an important one. Actually, it is very important. All email providers (Gmail, Hotmail etc...) will track how recipients engage with your emails. 
   
   Things like how many people open, click & read your email will increase your trust and delivery rate. Whereas users that mark your message as spam will cause future campaigns to be delivered into the junk folder.
   
   As part of the new updates being introduced in 2024, Gmail will enforce a clear spam rate threshold that you must stay under to ensure positive delivery of your messages.
   
   At present, anytime somebody reports your message as spam, we will automatically unsubscribe them from your list. However, it is also important to maintain a clean database by ensuring that all data captured is opt-in and contacts have provided intent to be contacted.

Impact On You

You will need to make sure that the domains you want to send email from is setup correctly. Please read and follow our email authentication guide to get this setup. You can also reach out to your Customer Success Manager or our Support team for more information.

These changes mean that from the 1st of Feb 2024, you will no longer be able to use a gmail or yahoo address as the sender email.