Near the end of the first quarter of 2023, Google and Yahoo! updated their bulk (5,000+ messages a day) email requirements with the intention of keeping inboxes safer and more spam-free.
Among the new requirements were making it easier to unsubscribe with a single mouse click and making sure their sending domains/IPs have valid forward and reverse DNS records.
This posed an issue for many marketers who thought they were already pursuing best practices with their existing one-click unsubscribe feature. These one-clicks are typically, an unsubscribe or an opt out link in the footer, which takes the subscriber to a landing page hosted on that sender's website that, for example, says, “Thank you. You have been unsubscribed, and we will opt you out within seven to 10 business days.”
They may have met the anti-spam and GDPR requirements, but not those of RFC 8058. Google and Yahoo! want insight into who is unsubscribing and that that unsubscribe is essentially being honored and being passed over in real time and through the ISP itself. RFC 8058 requires a specific email header called a List-Unsubscribe-Post header. This header field contains a URL that, when clicked, triggers the unsubscribe process on the sender's server.
So the unsubscribe now is in the header content of the email on delivery. The user has the ability, much like they did years ago when Gmail added the spam complaint button up in the header of messages, to opt out within the inbox, not just from the email itself.
Gmail, and Yahoo! recognize the "List-Unsubscribe-Post" header and present the unsubscribe link to the recipient in a clear and prominent way. Senders still have the option to return a landing page, but it can’t quite follow the familiar process of a preference page.
Though Gmail and Yahoo! are the first large email systems to require such a change, other platforms such as Microsoft (Hotmail and Outlook), MSN and other email platforms are expected to follow suit in 2025.
Marketing opportunity
With the unsubscribe button being so prevalent, recipients are going to be clicking “unsubscribe” much more frequently. So, the overall universe that marketers have to send out their messages will be much smaller. But rather than seeing that a detriment, marketers should look at it as an opportunity.
When it comes to deliverability, email engagement is very important. How your subscribers engage with your email is what matters most. For example, Google does not care if email recipients are going to your brand's website. What Google, Yahoo! and other email platforms care if a brand is sending daily emails, that are ignored, left in the spam folder or are deleted without being opened. Those results will affect delivery and sender reputation.
Marketers should also note if there is a significant difference in how unsubscribe is rendered from spam complaint. If an email recipient manually unsubscribes, it doesn’t affect a sender’s reputation and how the delivery of future messages. However, if the message is flagged as spam, the brand’s reputation (for emails) will be negatively impacted.
If the sender continues to saturate users who aren’t engaging with the emails, over time the sender will see declining open rates, yet the delivery rates look healthy on the surface. However, in these instances, many of the emails are going to spam and junk folders, so the recipients aren’t noticing them, even if they would be of interest.
Additionally, you may see an increase in your deferral percentage, meaning that Gmail and other platforms are sending everything through, effectively throttling your volume. So while you may be sending out 900,000 messages on a specific day, the email platform may parse that volume over three days. That’s a problem for time-sensitive material.
Automation to the rescue
Marketers should be using an email service provider (ESP) that provides detailed metrics that makes it easy to pinpoint any issues and how to rectify them. The ESP should provide details on your delivery rates in comparison to open rates, block rates, spam complaints, SMTP errors, etc.
It’s best to work with an ESP that uses dedicated IPs, making it relatively easy to troubleshoot any deliverability issues. There should be automated alerts for any identified issues. If you’re sending from a shared IP environment, then you are not just looking at your performance, gut also the performance of everyone that is using that set of IPs, which makes it more difficult to pinpoint any issues that are specific to you rather than to issues for the entire group of IP users.
Automation, by itself, isn’t enough to get the job done. A “human in the loop” is necessary as well. Every good sending platform has at least one employee who is managing the inbox performance or the delivery of the campaigns and messages, as well as the server-to-server connection for their clients. These EPS will provide proactive recommendations on how to avoid any current email issues in the future. Note that while some ESPs provide the human management “out of the box,” others require and additional fee for such a service.
A moving target
Marketers need to remember that the rules for email marketing is a constantly shifting target. Learning today’s rules and best practices serves as a knowledge base, but it isn’t the final word. Knowing email spam, opt-out and other rules and best practices is an ongoing process, not a “doing it once and you’re finished” exercise. As you’re reading this article, new rules are already being considered or are already being written.
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