Mass emails are an important tool in the arsenal of a marketer. These help build personalized channels of communication with their clientele in a near-instantaneous manner. From welcoming a customer into a business to being able to provide them with important updates on a product or service, mass emails do it all.
What’s more, when customers are unaware of a product, mass emails sent out to potential leads can also help in generating revenue. Such emails are known as outbound emails, an even better method as compared to the good-old cold calling.
Evidently, mass emails can help generate as well as retain clients, and hence bring in recurring revenue.
This is why, emails need to be sent out promptly and on time, any changes to your email campaigns can cause disruption, for example, Google’s proposed changes to their mass email policies.
What are these changes about?
Policy changes were announced in October 2023 and are being implemented over the next few months and will particularly affect bulk senders.
What’s a bulk sender? Google classifies a bulk sender as someone who sends close to 5,000 emails or more within 24 hours from the same primary domain to personal Gmail accounts. Once you meet this threshold, you’re permanently considered a bulk sender and must adhere to the following guidelines:
- Spam Rates: bulk senders must adhere to specific spam rate guidelines. You can check them out here.
- Authentication Requirements: senders need to authenticate their email address, proving ownership of their domain and avoiding IP address spoofing.
- Unsubscribe Options: Starting June 2024, bulk senders must include a one-click unsubscribe option in all commercial and promotional emails.
Don’t worry, these changes will still take a while to implement. Here’s a timeline:
- February 2024: Bulk senders will receive temporary errors on a small percentage of non-compliant messages.
- April 2024: Google will reject non-compliant email traffic, beginning with a small percentage and gradually increasing.
- June 2024: All bulk senders must implement the one-click unsubscribe option.
Remember that these guidelines apply only to messages sent to personal Gmail accounts; emails sent to Google Workspace accounts and intra-domain messages are excluded. Regardless of account type, all senders must follow these rules to avoid having their messages rejected or marked as spam.
So if your business is sending mass emails to its customers on Gmail, ensure you follow the rules above and you’ll be good! But if you’re looking for an email which will follow these rules by default and flag potential “spam” for mass emails, you can opt for Contacto.
What’s more, it’s an emailing app built on the Salesforce platform itself, which makes it even easier to integrate with the marketing cloud or CRM, at the same time being compliant with Google’s rules.
Happy Emailing!
