Email authentication changes coming in February 2024
There’s a crucial update coming our way in February 2024 from Gmail and Yahoo! regarding email authentication. From this time, both companies have required bulk senders to authenticate their email domains.
This means that starting February 2024, it is mandatory to authenticate your domain in Prowly in order to continue sending emails through our platform.
For detailed instructions on how to authenticate your domain in Prowly, please refer to our Help Center article or reach out to our Customer Support team using chat.
Spam filters aren’t just something that email marketers have to worry about. Anyone who depends on email for starting and maintaining relationships needs to be aware of the rules involved when it comes to ensuring the safe delivery of your messages. That includes PR pros using email to send pitches to media contacts.
Even if you have no intention of doing anything that violates the rules and standards of email service providers, you can still get unwanted attention from spam filters.
1. Start by adding the instruction below to the SPF record of your domain. You can do that in your domain configuration dashboard. Follow instructions about how to do this in the help center of your hosting service:
include:spf-es.prowly.com
The alternative but recommended solution is to go through the domain authentication process in order to set up DKIM and SPF records for all your sender domains. Read more about it in this article.
2. Make sure your contact list is well-optimized. Statistics on rejected or bounced addresses that you get after each email campaign can help you with that.
3. Another important issue is email subject lines. You can find a list of phrases that spam filters are sensitive to spam filters. Here is a sample list. The use of these phrases can result in an automatic flagging of your messages as spam, even if the recipient does not mark your messages as such.
4. A good practice is also asking your recipients to add your address to their contact list. This way, your emails will always get delivered to them.
5. Also, pay attention to the number of additional elements in emails, such as graphics, additional links, bold text, italics, etc. Remember never to send emails that contain only a link or just a graphic and a link because they carry a huge risk of being automatically marked as spam.
6. Last but not least, be careful with your message frequency. Bombarding recipients with frequent messages is a sure way to push them to mark your messages as spam.
Just as with triggering spam filters, getting spam complaints isn’t something you do on purpose. Following these tips will keep your contacts happy and your sender reputation in good standing. Anti-spam measures are a necessary evil in the world of email and the same tools that help to catch spammers can also cause problems for you if you’re not careful.
Just remember that a little caution when putting your email pitches together can save a lot of headache later!