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If you didn’t already know, that screenshot that’s been all over social media, suggesting that Google is telling users that Gmail is to be sunsetted in August 2024, is a hoax. Don’t believe the hype. You can read more on this from the BBC here. An interesting side note: Apparently Elon Musk used this as an opportunity to suggest that a Musk-provided alternative, called X Mail, is coming. There isn’t much more to say about that until/unless something actually happens. Stay tuned.
Just recently discovered in my own inbox: a notice from Google indicating that they’re going to require OAuth access for third party applications connecting to “Gmail, Google Calendar, Contacts via protocols such as CalDAV, CardDAV, IMAP, SMTP, and POP.” Most modern apps support OAuth already, but there are a number of legacy tools out there that do not — anything where you might have configured an app password to link that third party functionality to your Google (Workspace) account. Starting June 15, 2024, Google will remove the allow “less secure access” app password settings from Google Workspace admin. Currently configured apps and passwords should continue to work until September 30, 2024, at which time support for that functionality will be disabled for Google Workspace users. Read more details here. Does this affect you? Impact here likely isn’t broad, and certainly I’m a fan of better security. But I also do
Google’s Gmail might be the preeminent mailbox provider. Launched in 2004, Gmail has grown from the “new kid on the block” into one of the biggest hosts of individual email mailboxes in the world. Depending on what data you look at, you might even see Gmail as the #1 mailbox provider, at least here in the US. Gmail’s spam filtering systems incorporate user feedback and engagement. And they know what they’re doing. If you are not sending wanted mail to people who requested that mail and who read that mail at high enough percentages, you’re going to struggle. You won’t reliably get your mail to the inbox. Their systems are too good — their magic spam fighting robots look at metrics very closely — and their view of certain metrics can even change over time! What got you to the inbox in 2019 might not be good enough to get
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
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.
As the fight against spam emails rages on, Google has recently introduced its latest defense mechanism in the form of RETVec. The Resilient and Efficient Text Vectorizer for Gmail is an advanced multilingual anti-spam tool that blocks unwanted or predatory emails in an upgrade to the conventional mechanisms. In this blog, we shall take a closer look at this tool and its implications for you as a marketer. Let’s dive in. RETVec: Revolutionizing your inbox game Gmail uses text classification models to detect and prevent phishing, spam content, or scam. As soon as the models identify these texts, they block and filter out the malicious email content to your spam folder. However, these machine learning models can struggle with this identification if cyberattackers use typos, invisible characters, and non-Latin characters to bypass the classifiers (e.g. they spell “coupon” as ©oμpΟn or “Offer” as O 𝑓 𝑓 er). If, let’s say
As the fight against spam emails rages on, Google has recently introduced its latest defense mechanism in the form of RETVec. The Resilient and Efficient Text Vectorizer for Gmail is an advanced multilingual anti-spam tool that blocks unwanted or predatory emails in an upgrade to the conventional mechanisms. In this blog, we shall take a closer look at this tool and its implications for you as a marketer. Let’s dive in. RETVec: Revolutionizing your inbox game Gmail uses text classification models to detect and prevent phishing, spam content, or scam. As soon as the models identify these texts, they block and filter out the malicious email content to your spam folder. However, these machine learning models can struggle with this identification if cyberattackers use typos, invisible characters, and non-Latin characters to bypass the classifiers (e.g. they spell “coupon” as ©oμpΟn or “Offer” as O 𝑓 𝑓 er). If, let’s say
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