• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, February 15, 2024

Bulk Gmail senders have been notified that they must begin implementing enhanced requirements, including email authentication — this month. 

But here is a detail that may have escaped their notice. As of April, messages that are not compliant will start being rejected. This is no April’s Fool joke. 

Google says it will “start rejecting a percentage of non-compliant email traffic" and adds that it will "gradually increase the rejection rate,” according to Forbes. 

Case in point: if 75% of the traffic meets the new email sender authentication guidelines, then “a percentage” of the remaining non-compliant 25% will be rejected,” Forbes writes. And enforcement will be “gradual and progressive.”

Gmail requires that bulk senders — those sending more than 5,000 messages to Gmail per day — authenticate their email using well-established best practices. The goal? To “close loopholes exploited by attackers that threaten everyone who uses email.”

The goal of this exercise is to help brands ensure they are only sending wanted email. To achieve this, Gmail will enforce a spam-rate threshold that senders must remain under to protect Gmail users from being bombarded with an unwanted messages.  

Here's one more deadline: Bulk senders have until June 1 to "implement one-click unsubscribe in all commercial, promotional messages." What’s more, unsubscribe requests must be processed within two days. 

Just a reminder.