In the tech industry, creating convincing pranks on April 1 is commonplace. However, this April Fool’s Day, news of mass rejection of emails sent to Gmail account holders will be no joke. In just 14 days, new Google rules will begin in earnest that could see swathes of incoming mail blocked. Here's what you need to know about this impending, and important, change.
Google has been making it explicit since October 2023 that new email sender authentication rules will result in some messages to Gmail accounts being rejected and bounced back to the sender en masse. Google announced that “starting in 2024, we’ll require bulk senders to authenticate their emails, allow for easy unsubscription and stay under a reported spam threshold.” Some of these new protections are scheduled to start in 14 days and will impact every holder of a personal Gmail account in a very positive way.
According to Google’s internal statistics, Gmail’s AI protections stop more than 99.9% of spam, phishing and malware-carrying emails from reaching users’ inboxes. However, the new rules are aimed squarely at bulk senders, defined as those sending at least 5,000 messages daily to Gmail addresses. To be labeled as a bulk sender, that 5,000 limit only has to be reached once in 24 hours for the attribution to become permanent.
Google does appear to be taking a slow and steady approach to the new rules for bulk email senders to Gmail accounts, with enforcement starting from April 1. The guidelines do not apply to emails sent to Google Workspace accounts, only personal Gmail accounts, but they apply to all senders, including those who use Google Workspace.
The new rules aim to “boost sender-side security and increase the control users have over what gets into their inbox even more. Responsible email marketing specialists will need to ensure they are compliant with protocols such as Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance, DomainKeys Identified Mail, and Sender Policy Framework to avoid being affected by the new rules.
Starting June 1, Google will also implement the requirement that all commercial and promotional emails have a one-click unsubscribe function for recipients. Organizations considering mass-email marketing campaigns need to act swiftly to comply with the upcoming changes to avoid disruptions in their email communications.
