Email Blogs
Here’s a link to DMARCian’s DMARC Dictionary. Say that ten times fast! Then bookmark it, because it’ll come in handy as you navigate this new world of DMARC. And don’t forget to keep their DMARC Inspector link handy, too.
Time to decode another deliverability acronym. Today, we’re going to talk about VMC, which stands for “Verified Mark Certificate.” A VMC is something that a domain owner will purchase to go along with their BIMI (“Brand Indicators for Message Identification”) sender logo implementation. BIMI is the specification to allow a domain owner to publish details of a logo meant to show up in the inbox next to email sends from that domain. VMC is a certificate purchased from and issued by either DigiCert or Entrust. The purchase process involves either of those companies verifying that you are who you say you are, and that your logo is appropriately trademarked. VMC is an optional add on to the BIMI specification. However, Apple and Gmail will only display BIMI logos for domains that have implemented the Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) process. No VMC means no BIMI logo in Gmail or on Apple
With over nine years experience at Google, Neil Kumaran has worked across multiple teams, but always focused on things close to my heart – risk mitigation, security, safety and anti-abuse. It is thus timely that he was willing to sit down and chat with me about the upcoming new Gmail sender requirements, the initial phase of which is set to begin in February. I think it’s easy for most (good) email senders to comply. I do grant, though, that there are some number of email senders who may not be technically savvy enough to know how to implement technologies like DKIM and DMARC on their own, and that work remains to be done to help educate the world about these new requirements. Hopefully discussions like this will help. And keep an eye on Spam Resource for more help and guidance. And with no further ado, on to the interview. Hey
It’s time for another Webinar Rewind! Recently I presented (alongside Jesse Kennedy) a live webinar specifically meant to help AWeber users get up to speed on the new sender requirements brought to us by Yahoo and Google. With a focus on the specifics of what buttons to push, what text to paste into what field, even where and how to buy a domain — from start to finish, how to configure your email domain so that your AWeber email sends are fully in compliance with the new email authentication requirements. If you missed it, don’t fret! You can find the recording here and embedded below. We made sure to save time to take your questions, and did a bunch of live poking at email authentication and domain DNS settings, so you could see us push the buttons that you yourself need to push to get everything in place. As an
DMARC — and specifically, DKIM and DMARC compliance with the new Gmail and Yahoo Mail Requirements — these are a very hot topic for 2024! I’ve been talking about all of this quite a bit lately and I don’t see that letting up any time soon. Want to get in on the action? Here’s your chance. On January 10th, 2024, LB Blair from Email Industries and yours truly (Al Iverson) presented a live webinar on this very topic: DMARC-Pocalypse Now: What you need to know about DMARC and new Yahoo/Gmail requirements . Explaining what DMARC is, why you need it, what to be aware of as far as implementing it — prerequisites, risks, policy settings, reporting annoyances, all that jazz. We didn’t focus on just a single email sending or newsletter send platform — it was more of a technical overview of what any savvy sender might need to know
Here is everything you need to know (I think? I hope?) about how to comply with the new sender requirements announced by Google and Yahoo, applying to Gmail and Yahoo mail, coming into force in early 2024. You can read more about it all here (and over at Yahoo or Google), but it boils down to a handful of things that were previously best practice recommendations for deliverability excellence, which are now requirements that these two mailbox providers are saying that senders must implement. Those that don’t implement these requirements risk being blocked and unable to send mail to Yahoo Mail and Gmail subscribers. Here are the ten steps you need to take, that if you follow these all the way through, you’ll be fully compliant with the new requirements. Stop sending newsletter/marketing/bulk mail as Gmail or Yahoo. For your 1:1 email messaging where you respond to emails from your
Here’s a directory of many different email service provider (ESP) links to their various guides explaining what their clients have to do to be fully compliant with the new 2024 Yahoo / Google sender requirements. Wondering how different platforms are guiding their customers? Or are you a customer of a given platform and you’re looking to find their guidance? Here you go. AWeber Beehiiv BenchmarkEmail Braze Brevo Constant Contact ConvertKit GetResponse HubSpot Klaviyo Mailchimp MailerLite MessageBird Sender Sendgrid Socketlabs There are lots more ESP/CRM platforms out there. Did I miss yours? Drop me a line via the usual means or leave a comment below with details, and I’ll update this list as I’m able.
It’s Friday! Why don’t we have a little bit of fun today? Here’s the first in a (maybe) regular series of me talking to interesting people about stuff. Fun stuff, boring stuff. Work stuff, silly stuff. Different stuff. Let’s call it: Spam Resource Spotlight. I hope you’ll enjoy it! With ten years experience in the email marketing, deliverability and compliance space, my friend Alison Gootee (who is not a photographer based in Brooklyn and New Orleans) is somebody that you should consider an expert. Currently she’s a ‘spam stopper, best practices advocate, and general know-it-all’ for a large email and marketing automation provider Hey, Alison! Thanks for taking the time to talk to me today! Can you tell me how you came to get started in this wacky world of deliverability? Hey Al! Thank you so much for inviting me! I have been a long-time admirer of yours, and it’s
Here’s a new oops that I’ve observed a few times recently! In case you didn’t know already, you can’t have two DMARC records for your domain name. (I’m not talking about subdomains … I’m talking about specifically having two DMARC DNS records at the same level in DNS.) If you look up your domain’s DMARC record, using dmarcian’s DMARC Inspector, or the Wombatmail tool, or any of the many fine tools out there, and you look up your domain name, and you see that domain has two DMARC records in DNS, that’s a fail. Not a good thing. You don’t want that. You can have only one. Here’s an example of a domain with a busted double DMARC record. I didn’t even create that one special for you — that was my own oops. So I’m going to leave it in place, to share with you all. See, it happens
It’s not always easy to know what the actual headers and body of an email as sent look like. For a long time accepted wisdom was that you could send a copy to your gmail account, and use the Show Original menu option to, well, see the original message as raw text. It turns out that’s not actually something you can trust. I used swaks to send a test message with an extra header to my gmail account. swaks –to wttwsteve@gmail.com –from steve@blighty.com –add-header “List-Unsubscribe: =?us-ascii?Q?=3Cmailto=3Asteve=40blighty.com=3e?=” Code language: JavaScript ( javascript ) We can see swaks sending it: -> DATA Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2024 08:49 :59 -0800 -> To: wttwsteve @gmail.com -> From: steve@blighty.com -> Subject: test Wed, 17 Jan 2024 08:49:59 -0800 -> X-Mailer: swaks v20130209.0 jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/ -> List-Unsubscribe: =?us-ascii?Q?=3Cmailto=3Asteve=40blighty.com=3e?= -> Code language: CSS ( css ) But when we then go to gmail and click on Show