EP. 57- GMAIL & YAHOO Email Changes YOU NEED TO KNOW! I Expert Quick Tips

Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

We are here for a really important, as important as this podcast can be episode of do this, not that. Today we are going to go through there's some big changes coming to the world of email marketing.

There are new requirements starting February 1st from Gmail and Yahoo that you may have seen all over the place that are some changes that you have to make sure you implement that all of us are going to have to be aware of to make sure that our emails are getting delivered, that we're not running into issues, running into spam folders, all this stuff. And I brought, I have a special guest here which I'm going to introduce her in a second. But overall, I want everybody to relax, okay?

Because there's a lot of content out there about these changes from Yahoo and Gmail and there's a lot of scare tactics that the sky is falling, that email is going to become impossible to do, that you're going to go to the spam folder all the time. None of that is accurate.

Almost all the requirements are things you're probably already doing okay and they're all a good thing and they're all not hard to do. So don't believe all of the sky is falling of you that's out there.

So let me bring on my special guest and then we're going to go through this all and I promise you, by the end of this podcast, you're going to feel really comfortable about what you need to do and you're also going to feel really comfortable and hopefully empowered that you're already doing the lion's share of what you need to do. All right, so who do I have here? I have Allison Cooley, who just by the very nature of her name is cool because half her name says the word cool.

I have Allison Cooley who is the director of Growth marketing at Marigold. Now, if you don't know Marigold, then I don't know who you are, but Marigold is amazing.

They are a platform that has many different email sending platforms as part of them. They have Sail through and Cheetah Digital and Emma and campaign monitor and 100 other ones I'm not even thinking of.

And Allison Cooley has been doing this email stuff forever. She runs it all in terms of their growth marketing at Marigold.

So I've asked her to join the podcast say so we can go through the different things everybody needs to know about this Gmail and Yahoo Change. Alison, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be on this because I have been doing B2B marketing for a long time and email marketing is a big part of that.

And it just so coincidentally happens that I now work at an email marketing provider. So I both understand the technology at a deeper level because of the products that we have.

But I've been on that side of the fence with everyone else. I'm in the thick of it with all of you. You're my people.

And deliverability is so scary and so easy to achieve if you have the right plan in place and it's you hit the nail on the head. Scare tactics and anything. When it comes to compliance, everyone gets really nervous.

But these requirements are actually really good for brands and companies and organizations because it will improve your ability. One, let's step back. They've been best practice for 20 years. Ten years, depending on things can spam.

Different compliance mandates have come over the past 20 years. We are mostly, you probably already adhere to the scariest one, which is authenticating your email domain.

And then we need to make unsubscribing easier and then stay behind the spam rate threshold as well. So I'll get into all of that, Jay, but I'm really excited to be here.

I have a lot of insights and we have a lot of materials we're going to be able to share with you in the show notes.

Yeah. And that's really important.

And so first off, let's take one step back in that if you have no idea what Allison and I are talking about, what is, what are they talking about? Changes. Gmail, Yahoo. Let me just take one step back.

So Gmail and Yahoo announced a few months back that they were going to be making some changes requirements. They were going to be adding new requirements to the way that you are allowed to send bulk email into anybody that uses Gmail or uses Yahoo.

And those requirements are going to go into effect February 1st, actually for Gmail and then sometime in the first quarter for Yahoo. They haven't said an exact date. And the good news is the requirements are the same essentially. Right.

So if you do, if you do it for all, then you'll be fine. And there's four essential things that you need to do. And Allison is going to help take us through these. And if you do them, you're fine.

And by the way, you don't need to try to take crazy notes to make sure you capture it all in the show notes.

And Alice is going to let you know later on we have all this stuff that she's brought to the table that allow you to do it on your own, all the links that you need. And this is for business marketers and consumer marketers.

So Alison, I'm going to go through the four different things, then you're going to tell me what we got to do, if that's cool.

All right, that sounds great. And let's not go down the rabbit hole.

Yes, no rabbit hole. And this is all good things. But Allison said is so true.

If, if this is like a big scary thing to you and this has a massive impact on your email marketing, then you've been doing something wrong for a really long time, then you're a bad actor.

99% of the people on the planet, this is a zero burger change into what you're doing and it is a win because it's going to eliminate more bad guys and girls. So this is an overall win. So here's the four things.

The first one is a no brainer, which is you cannot send bulk email, bulk emails, more than 5,000 messages to Gmail addresses in one day or Yahoo addresses in one day. More than 5,000 messages in one day. You can't send more than 5,000 messages one day from basically a personal domain from a Gmail address.

So you need to be sending it from your a company domain of some kind if you're sending more than 5,000 emails a day. So I can't send from jmail.com to 20,000 people in Gmail anymore. That's viewed as me being a spammer and I highly doubt any of you are doing that.

Anyway. That one, let's put that to the side. Let's get into the next one. Allison, which is authentication. This is a very big word, a very big scary word.

What does this mean? What do we got to do and what's happening?

Yeah, so what you need to do, it gets into the Alphabet soup of deliverability. So this is where we're talking about spf, which is a sender policy framework. So let's start there.

The sender policy framework is just a very long term to say that when I establish my email marketing platform and I have my from address as Alison Cooley, eatmericgold.com, let's just use me as an example, which is the company's domain to which I work for. And I'm going to start sending our emails to our Marigold lists using our meetmeragold.com thing.

And it's validated that the from is correct, meaning I'm letting my sending platform send on behalf of my company and it's all approved. And that's really, it's. I always joke that if you have the right IT person in place, it can do two clicks and you're done.

But sometimes when you're new to it and you have some new people who might not have ever implemented an email marketing platform and made those sorts of changes, it can take a while to find out where the DNS is and figure out that that's like half the hurdle is just finding the person to update the DNS and give them the instructions that they need, which is always kind of a fun experiment if you've never done it before, depending on everyone's knowledge. Also, why we're not going down the rabbit hole right now with this.

And then dkim is the domain keys identified mail and this also helps verify that the sending address is legitimate and you are not a prince in some far off country trying to get money out of someone sort of story. And then finally dmarc, which I think I might be correct on this, has sort of been like nice to have in the email marketing world.

It's now a really need to have in this update. So you just need to make sure that all these things are coming together and that one gets a little more technical.

But again, if you're on the DNS and you're configuring it correctly and you have the right tools and resources, can be really simple to do.

Okay, so that's perfect. That's very helpful. So you got spf, you got dkim and you got dmarc. Okay, now if I'm listening to this, I'm like, what a lot of words.

Get lost if you listen.

It's confusing. Here's what I will tell you to put everybody's mind at ease.

If you are sending your email out using platforms like Marigold or HubSpot or mailchimp or a hundred other platforms, major platforms, I will tell you that your messages, I would say 99% are already authenticated. That's already happening. You don't have to worry about it.

That is done by default because if your messages weren't authenticated, you'd be having major deliverability problems today. So while you want to Double check. You want to go back to your sending platform. Like, my emails authenticated. Are we doing the things I need to do?

You want to double check. But in the reality of it is, you're probably already doing it. You don't even realize it. So let's calm our nerves on that one.

Be like, okay, cool, I'm authenticated. I'm on a good platform. We are good. The next one is keeping spam complaints below 0.3%.

You know if your spam complaints are high and when you know it, and I've heard you talk about this a lot on your podcast, your open rates go down, and then you look and you think, oh, my gosh, that campaign stunk and it's all my fault. And my subject line was bad and the offer wasn't good, and no one opened it and no one clicked it. And it's not sometimes the case.

Sometimes it comes down to deliverability. We talk about this a lot in the deliverability ebook that we'll be sharing.

And it's just, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to your campaigns having those low metrics. But that will be a big indicator of spam complaints when you're seeing your numbers start to fall. And then you can dive deeper.

Whether it's free tools like Google Webmaster Tools, which is free, robust, can be scary at first, but really informative, or your own email platform, you're going to start seeing those numbers drop. So I have a lot of tips to reduce spam complaints. I'm having to go with you. Through with you.

Yeah. So I want you to do that. I just want to say one slight thing about spam complaints, because I get this.

I think there's this one thing that gets confused a bit. A spam complaint is not an unsubscribe. That is apples and garbage cans. Okay. And unsubscribe is, someone take me off your list.

I don't like your stuff anymore. Whatever a spam complaint is, you're a bad person and you're doing bad things. And I'm going to click the spam complaint button.

So it's not unsubscribe. It's also not emails that are going into the junk folder. It's not even the emails.

If your emails are going into the spam folder, that doesn't mean it's a spam complaint. A spam complaint is literally somebody taking the action to say, this is spam and clicking spam complaint. And the, The.

The threshold now is keeping your spam complaints below 0.3%, which I would have to imagine if you're trying to do things right, you're not just going out there and buying garbage data and doing all these terrible things that you are well below that number on your sends.

So again, another thing that's a requirement that really you've probably already been doing, which is why you don't have to freak out, but you got to monitor it. And so Allison, what are some ways to make sure we keep them low?

Okay, this one I know you feel passionately about when someone agrees to receive a message in the value exchange, so you're giving them something in return for their contact information. You need to honor that.

So if you say I'm going to email you a newsletter once a month and you suddenly send them three emails a day during the holidays about the same promotion over and over again, they're going to complain because that's not what they agreed to. So it's a brand.

You need to be honest and you need to think about how often you're emailing people and if that's what they agreed to first and foremost.

Because sometimes especially the people who are building the campaigns are getting messages from other parts of the business saying we just need to do gets tricky there, I've been there. You gotta, you've got to respect the contract. You also have to. It's already automated in the system, but respect the unsubscribe.

So any platform you're using is gonna do that.

You need to make sure your emails are clear and well branded, meaning you know that famous prince and wherever part of the land needs to look like your and you need to stay consistent and relevant. Personalize your messaging so it makes it feel like the person receiving the email is getting something that's more curated to their interests.

And then a couple other really technical things is suppressing against non engaged subscribers. So that's how your business defines it.

So if your business has a humongous list and you say someone's not engaged, if they haven't clicked or opened an email After 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, it depends on how often you send what you're sending, why you're sending it. When those people in that non engaged segment are dropping off and complaining about spam, start sending into the engaged segment.

Those people, the one who receive your emails and things of that nature.

Yeah. And so let me just piggyback on because this is a weird thing in that on one hand with Allison, just details. Totally right.

If you just inundate the person. You're like, oh, this is garbage. This is spam. Take me off your list. You're not living up to that.

The way that the person registered or signed up with you. You're not living up to your end of the bargain. But here's the weird part. If you don't send enough, okay, the person's gonna forget about you.

They're gonna forget that they even signed up. And then, so let's say you have a newsletter and I'm a big believer you can't send out a newsletter just once a month. It's just not enough.

And let's say you do have that newsletter and you only send it out monthly. 28 days pass since the last newsletter was received. The person then gets the newsletter like I even sign up for this.

They forget because you have too long of a gap in terms of your communication. So on one hand you can't communicate too much because then you're going to annoy them. Spam complaint.

On the other hand, if you don't communicate enough like, you know, weekly or whatnot, then you're going to be deemed as someone they don't even remember they have that relationship with and they're going to hit that spam complaint button. So there is this tightrope that you need to walk and make sure you're driving that engagement.

But don't think that you can just basically not send out a lot and then once every 90 days start sending to your list and good things will happen. It will go sideways fast. So that is the spam complaint ratio. All right.

The last one, which I think is the hot mess confusion on planet earth that we are going to solve for right now.

Part of the requirement of the Gmail Yahoo change in email sending requirements for February is that all messages need to have a one click unsubscribe. I just want to lay the groundwork here and then Allison's going to take us through this.

I just want one click unsubscribe is not meaning that you should get rid of that unsubscribe link in your messages at the bottom of your messages that lead to your preference cent or that lead to a two step unsubscribe process where you have the person confirm that they want to remove themselves. This does not mean you get rid of that. That is a best practice. You want to have that in your messages.

What we're talking about here is not getting rid of that. This one click unsubscribe header, this is in addition to your regular unsubscribing process that you have in your messages.

So, Allison, break it down. What do we now need to have?

Okay, the one click unsubscribe link and we'll share a photo of this somehow, some way, probably you'll figure it out is actually and you probably, if you go into your Gmail or your Yahoo or whatever it is, you'll see the preview link.

So in where you're in your main inbox, you open it up and you probably already see it today because some brands do have this as a best practice already and they're probably like, you already got that down. It's that one click link. So it does not take you to a preference center. It is script.

It's code that's going to say, I click this button and I'm done, I'm out. What also happens when they click that button is that it needs to process within two days, which I'm sure we're going to get to in a second.

So where this header once clicks, unsubscribe header is causing a lot of confusion with email designers. People who are working on content, people are working on campaigns is they're interpreting it. And I did too.

Honestly, when I first read it, I had to verify like five times is do I need to put my one click unsubscribe, my unsubscribed normal unsubscribe link up in my header, like my email header, or do I need to put it in my preview link or things like that?

It's not that it is going to be in that header and it's on the vendor to help configure that on their end and put the code in to make it so that you can enable that feature 100%.

Right? And so your email header is not something that you just see in your message, you have to go to see it.

It's basically a code that consists of essential details that include all the authentication stuff in your message and some other code related to how your message gets delivered.

What this one click unsubscribe is you are literally adding one line piece of code to your email header that then allows for that little unsubscribe link to show up at the top of the messages, like on the top right hand side of messages that you see now.

So if the person wants that easy one click unsubscribes, they can click it if they open up the message and they are, you know, reading your message like, you know what, I don't like this thing. They still can go to the bottom of your message, click on that regular link that you've always had in there.

That takes them to your preference center, that takes them wherever. And they can unsubscribe the regular way, too. So there's basically now multiple ways that people can unsubscribe.

And what Gmail and Yahoo are trying to do is just make it easy, right? We can't play this game that should be hard to unsubscribe. It should be as easily as humanly possible to unsubscribe. So here's the other good news.

And Allison, you tell me if I'm wrong on this. I would say the overwhelming majority of major email platforms are going to be doing this and are doing this for you.

You don't need to lose your mind and try to figure out how to write code or any of that. Is that an accurate description?

Yes, it's accurate. And it's also true that we as providers found out when the market found out.

So if you're there thinking that we've got inside information on a lot of these things with 6, 10 months, 12 months in advance, we did find out right around the same time. And so it actually happened during the holidays. So peaks ending season.

And so I think a lot of email providers, especially Marigold, is working on embedding that into the product codes. We're well on our way. And so it should be absolutely available.

If it's not available and it's not easy to you, that's something that's a little bit of a red flag that you're currently using.

So let's, let's recap here and put everybody's mind at ease for a second. I feel like I'm being repetitive, but the reason I'm being repetitive is because.

Because I don't like email experts that are out there or companies that are out there that basically every time there's a new requirement by a platform, by, you know, a receiving email infrastructure or even a social media network or whatever, anybody comes out with these new requirements. A lot of companies try to take advantage of that and scare the marketplace and say, if you don't do this, it's the end of the world. It's nonsense.

This is not that hard, and it's a good thing. So let's recap what's going on here. You need to make sure your emails are authenticated.

99.9% of you all are already doing that, whether you know it or not.

You want to go back to your platform and say, hey, my emails authenticated Are they in compliance with this new Gmail Yahoo thing that's starting in February? You ask that question number two. You want to keep your spam complaints low. You want to keep them below 0.3%.

If you're not a bad sender, you're already there, you're fine. Don't send out garbage, you'll be cool. So that one's good. And then the one click unsubscribe.

You do not, you do not need to change your current unsubscribe program that you have. People can still go to the bottom of your message. Click on your preference center. They could still do a two step unsubscribe.

You are adding in the header, the technical header of your email message.

You're adding a piece of code that allows for an additional unsubscribe path, which is a little button that says the word unsubscribe in the upper right hand corner of the email messages that you're sending out. It's one piece of code. And again, almost every major platform already has this set up for you or will have it set up for you come February 1st.

So you should be fine. So if you keep doing what you're doing and you check with your platform on these different things, you should be golden. Allison, did we, we do it?

Did we get it right? What do you think?

We got one more and then we've got it right. So the processing time for unsubscribes was historically way back in the day, set for 10 days, which is a long time for someone.

If you're sending daily sends, that's where people start to hit that spam complaint button. Google recognizes that. Yahoo's seen that too. So they're asking and requiring that you adhere to it within two days.

So if you have that, automatic unsubscribe is best practice.

Not the one click, but when you go to the managed subscriptions and you process that within an automatic kind of thing, like best practice, you're fine.

But if that is a delayed because of business rules, because of multiple sending platforms, whatever it may be, that's where it's going to get a little hairy that you need to adhere to as well.

Okay, amazing. I love that you clarified that. So now we know what we got to do.

So in the show notes, we're going to put, we're going to put Allison is cool and she's given us some documents that if you really want to go deep on this, if you want to cure insomnia, you can read through these documents. That is everything you need to know about these changes. So Alison, what is going to be in the show notes?

Yes.

So we have a guide to the Google and Yahoo deliverability changes that are coming in February that details in great detail the rabbit hole which Jay and I tried to avoid going down, which I think we did a good job about. So you'll able to read that.

Marigold really prides ourselves on being one of the top deliverability platforms. We have a very high deliverability rate for the clients that we with each of our products has delivery services and teams and things of that nature.

This guide is going to be really great for folks who are either new to it, want to spruce up their knowledge. Things of that nature.

Amazing. I love all of that. That is super crazy valuable.

And before we get to the last segment of this crazy podcast, I also wanted to share that Allison has brought to the table a really great offer for everybody. So Marigold is where she runs growth marketing and again it's this platform that has many different sending platforms as part of it.

It has Sail through, it has Cheetah Digital, it has campaign monitor. One of the platforms it has is called Emma.

Emma is one of the leading email sending platforms on planet Earth and this is super cool only for do this not that listeners which is you. Marigold is offering up a 50% off offer. 50% off using the Emma sending platform.

If you want to take advantage of this offer, it is a limited time offer.

The only place where you could find this is you go to jschwedelson.com marigold so that's my full name, which is hard to spell but we'll put in the show notes. Jschweddleson.com Marigold you put in your info there and we will get you set up with that 50% off on the Emma sending platform.

I use the Marigold platform. It is awesome. This is great. Check it out. Jschweddelson.com Marigold okay, so let's get into some fun stuff.

Enough of this boring email deliverability garbage. Oh my God, it's terrible. The last segment of this podcast is always since you didn't ask where.

We talk about things that have nothing to do with anything related to work or whatever. So, Allison, you gotta tell me if I got this right. I'm about to embarrass myself. I'm pretty sure you are like a yoga person. Are you a yogi?

I don't know if you know what that means.

Yeah, I teach yoga on Saturday mornings, and it is the funnest thing I could ever do. And, yes, I'm a yogi, but no one's gonna find her about it. In my class, it's, we listen to classic rock, we move. It's super fun.

But my favorite part is, when I joined Marigold, we use asana as our product project management tool. But asana, and they'll say this themselves, is from the word asana, which is Sanskrit for posture, pose.

And I kept saying asana and asana in my two different workouts for so long. I was losing my mind, because everyone's like, what do you mean, asana? And so that's my funny little story of my yoga blending into Marigold life.

But, yeah, I do teach yoga.

Well, let me ask you a question. I'm being serious now, okay? I go to the gym and stuff. I try to be healthy. I'm a disaster, Whatever.

And my wife is always like, you got to come to yoga with me. Okay? So I've gone now. I'd say maybe three times. But every time I go, I cannot touch my toes.

The gap between where my hands end, me trying to touch my toes, and my toes, first of all, it seems to be getting worse. Second of all, it's very far. It's not like I'm almost there. And so when I'm in these yoga classes, I am do. I am a disaster. It doesn't look good.

And I'm always worried. Are you. As the yogi, be honest. Are you judging people like me? Like, that guy's an idiot. That guy. I feel like you're judging me.

God, no, I am not. I am walking around the room, just proud. Everyone's there and everyone. So yoga blocks bring the ground closer.

And so if you were in my class, I would have just casually grabbed two blocks and stuck them under your hands, and you would have been like, thank God I can at least touch my fingertips to a surface so that I feel like I'm doing the pose. But, no, yoga is wonderful.

The practice of, you know, breathing and connecting your breath to your mind, to your movement is a really beautiful thing. And, you know, I bring some of that to my team. We all Take a collective deep breath. When we. Our hair's on fire because of things going on.

And we're all, we're marketers. We move really fast. We're really high energy people.

So we always, we always do like three cleansing breaths when things are feeling a little stressed.

Wait, I want to do it now. Can we do it right now? Want to do it? How do you do it? You can teach everybody.

Okay, unclench your jaw.

Okay.

Pull the tongue off the roof of your mouth.

Okay.

Relax the eyes around your face. Now take a deep inhale for 3, 2, 1. Hold for a second at the top, and then slowly with your belly exhale.

And then do it again and again and again and again. Yeah. Nothing. No one ever feels bad after a deep breath, ever.

And you do that in meetings?

Yeah. I'm like, let's take a breath, y'. All.

So, like, when there's a stressful situation, does everyone be like, okay, Allison, calm us down? Are you like the go to for calm like, like for Zen vibes, or is that like part of you're in charge of growth, marketing, and Zen vibes.

Is that you pretty much like, I'm like, I'm so stressed out. Let's take a breath. Yeah, I guess so. It's. Anyone who knows me is probably cracking up listening to this because they're like, she's not wrong.

She does make everyone breathe and take a moment and take a step back because it's important.

Well, I want to make sure, like, in the show notes, you put in, like your Spotify Zen vibes playlist or something. Or, you know, I will.

I have. I have so many Spotify playlists.

Oh, good. We're gonna put that in the show notes too, so everyone can get the. The Zen vibes from Alison Cooley, the yogi, which should.

That should be your email signature.

Probably already taken.

Amazing. Well, this has been great. Again, everybody, all this stuff is in the show notes. Do not stress about this whole thing, okay? It's fine.

You're already probably doing everything you need to do. Just double check it all and you will be cool. And Allison, you are amazing for being here. Any other words you want to share with with the audience?

You know what? Feel free to reach out to me. I'm on LinkedIn. I might not respond immediately, but if you've got questions, I will get to you.

It might be at 5 in the morning, but I will respond to you so you can find me there. I'm happy to point you in the direction. Course. You can reach out to Jay and other folks, but thank you so much for having me on the podcast.

It's been really fun.

Awesome. Thanks so much, everybody. All right, take care. Thanks, Allison.

Thank you.

You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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