Google & Yahoo’s 2024 Anti-Spam Update: What does it mean for cold email?

Starting in February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo have announced that they're rolling out massive changes to how they handle bulk email senders. Depending on what you're reading, you might find some companies freaking out while others are excited about the changes.

But for all of us in sales, it leaves us asking “what does this mean for cold email?”

Here at LeadLoft, it’s important to understand how these changes impact our customers. So I’ve spent days researching the new changes and I’ll be sharing everything we’ve discovered here.

Let's dive in!

What are Google & Yahoo’s 2024 Email Changes?

Starting on February 1st 2024 Google and Yahoo will be taking action on any domain sending more than 5,000 marketing emails per day. These changes are primarily focused on domain security, making it easy to unsubscribe, and emphasis the importance keeping your spam reports low.

Google & Yahoo’s 2024 Email Requirements:

SPF Authentication
DKIM Authentication
DMARC Authentication
Include one-click unsubscribe links
Maintain a spam rate below 0.3%
Avoid sending misleading emails

If you're reading this and you're confused as to what all these acronyms mean, check out our article on how to set up DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. It explains what these are and how to implement them in a step-by-step guide.

Who will this impact?

Gmail and Yahoo's 2024 email regulations impact any domain sending more than 5,000 emails per day. In most cases, this is only going to impact email marketers using newsletter and email automation software.

If you're reading this because you send cold emails, you might be wondering “Who in their right mind is sending 5,000 emails per day?”

Well, this is the aspect that I'm most excited about. Their 5,000 email per day threshold and unsubscribe link requirements clearly indicate that these changes are meant for email marketers, NOT cold emailers.

How will this impact your cold email campaigns?

If your domain is sending less than 5,000 messages per day, Google’s cold email changes in 2024 will have virtually no impact on your cold email campaigns.

Because of this, we strongly recommend talking to your marketing department to learn about how many emails they're sending per day. If your domain is above the 5,000 email threshold, check out the next section where we outline how to handle this.

Regardless, if you haven’t already set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, make a note to take care of it first thing tomorrow. Even though these are not required below the 5k threshold, they’re still going to make a hugely positive impact on the performance of your cold email campaigns.

What to do if you are above the 5k threshold?

If your domain is sending more than 5,000 emails per day, it's likely the case that you have an email marketer on your team sending these emails.

If this is you, here are 3 actions you need to take today:

Share this article to make your email marketers aware of the changes.
Set up a secondary domain dedicated to your sales team.
Setup SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on both your primary and secondary domains.

The most important of these three steps is setting up a secondary domain solely dedicated to your sales team.

Having a secondary domain will make it virtually impossible for your sales team to send 5,000 emails per day. This should really only be the case if you're a Fortune 500 company with a massive sales team.

It will also ensure that both your marketing department and your sales team have their own domain to take care of, ensuring neither team is responsible for potential deliverability issues caused by the opposing department.

What do we think about the changes?

We obviously offer a software solution that’s used to send cold emails. With that said, you’d think we'd be concerned about what this means for our business. But we're actually excited about this change.

If you're sending cold emails correctly, you're only going to benefit from having less clutter in your prospect’s inbox. And for now, it looks like these changes are going to do just that.

We are, of course, curious what this might mean for cold email down the road. But for now, these changes are a great addition to both Google and Yahoo and we're in full support of them.

Wrapping Up

At the end of the day, Google and Yahoo's 2024 anti-spam update will have some significant impacts on email marketers managing newsletters. But for all of you cold emailers out there, you’re going to be almost entirely unaffected.

Just be sure to check with your marketing department to see how many emails they're sending from your domain per day. If they're sending more than 5,000 emails per day, take our recommended actions to mitigate this so you can continue to send cold emails without any issues.

Hopefully, you've found this article helpful! And if you have any questions about how these changes might impact your business, feel free to reach out to our team. We're always more than happy to help you out.