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.
Mass Email Senders Have 14 Days To Comply
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. Neil Kumaran, a Google group product manager responsible for Gmail security and trust, 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. To put that into context, that equates to around 15 billion daily emails. So, why is there any need for new rules impacting the mail that reaches Gmail accounts then? Those numbers are not good enough and still allow unwanted and potentially dangerous emails to slip the net.
New Google Bulk Sender Rules Require Email Authentication
The new rules are aimed squarely at bulk senders, which Google defines as those sending at least 5,000 messages daily to Gmail addresses. That number is calculated based on emails that are sent from the same primary domain regardless of the number of subdomains used. Importantly, 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.
Although Google does appear to be taking a slow and steady approach to the new rules for bulk email senders to Gmail accounts, you can expect things to start ramping up from April 1. “Starting in April 2024, we’ll begin rejecting non-compliant traffic,” Google has stated in an email sender guidelines FAQ, continuing, “we strongly recommend senders use the temporary failure enforcement period to make any changes required to become compliant.”
Although the guidelines do not apply to emails sent to Google Workspace accounts, only personal Gmail accounts, they apply to all senders, including those who use Google Workspace.
Act Now To Boost Sender-Side Security Or Face Mass Email Rejections
The new rules aim to “boost sender-side security and increase the control users have over what gets into their inbox even more. If anything, meeting these requirements should help senders reach those who want their messages more effectively, with diminished risk of spoofing and hijacking from bad actors,” a Google spokesperson said.
Responsible email marketing specialists will already be aware of protocols such as Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance, DomainKeys Identified Mail and Sender Policy Framework, but now any organization considering a mass-email marketing campaign needs to ensure they are as well, or they could be made to look like fools come April.
Starting June 1, Google will also start implementing the requirement that all commercial and promotional emails have a one-click unsubscribe function for recipients. The clock is ticking.
