Have you already heard or seen messages about Email Deliveribility and how it will affect businesses all around the world?

It’s true that big changes are coming… and as small business owners and we need to prepare! 

We have written this article especially for female entrepreneurs – sending newsletters is super important to almost any business and especially to female business owners. It is THE way to stay in touch with people that have shown an interest in your business and your offers. 

It is a well known fact that people have to see and hear things several times before they make a buying decision, AND they only buy from people they know, like and trust.

Building an email list so you can pop up in people’s world (through their inbox) is the way you can make that happen, and a newsletter optin on your website helps you convert website visitors into subscribers, and then through nurturing them with your emails, into paying clients.

And the big players in the email world – gmail, yahoo and microsoft that together control most of the world’s inboxes –  are changing the rules about what emails they are going to allow into people’s inbox and it will take effect from February 2024.

If you are a business and  you send emails and newsletters, these changes are going to impact you, so it’s important to know what’s going to happen, and why, and what you need to do to make sure your emails are still going to arrive where they should.

in this article we are going to:

email deliveribility in a nutshell

In a time where emails rule our inboxes, ensuring your messages actually land there is a big deal. Everyone, from your family to your clients, is in the same boat. And the email landscape is going to change because major email players like Google and Yahoo are shaking things up. They now require from us that our emails are authenticated (checked) with three mechanisms or protocols, DKIM, SPF and DMARC

Let’s break it down in simple terms so you can keep your emails sailing smoothly. And let’s start with the basics…

But in practice there is a bit more to it …

how email actually works (simplified)

What actually happens is that after you press send on your email, it goes to an outgoing email-server. This is a bit like what a post-office is for snail-mail. They sort the mail and send it on to an incoming email-server, which is like a receiving post-office in a different place.

The receiving post-office again does some sorting and then sends the mail on to its final destination; the person you were emailing.

recommendations becoming requirements

It means that if you send an email, and it doesn’t pass the requirements, your email won’t be delivered at all. So it will no longer be marked spam and be delivered to a junk-folder. No, it will simply be discarded instead; like it never even existed in the first place.

So that’s going to mean less junk email to deal with. Which is great, right?

Yes, it’s a great step forwards. But it also means that all legitimate emails need to comply, otherwise they’ll receive the same treatment as spam.

maintaining your sender reputation

To make sure your emails keep going to inboxes, you need to maintain a good sender reputation. In other words, if you do spammy stuff, your emails are going to be blocked. Part of a good sender reputation is following certain protocols. These protocols have been around for a while, but probably you’ve never had to deal with them, because they were only a recommendation instead of a requirement.

So what are these protocols?

methods for stopping spam

There are 3 things you need to have in place for your email to pass the new requirements: SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Let’s a have a look at what they are, using mail and post offices as a metaphor.

spf
sender policy framework

With SPF you define which post offices are allowed to send email on your behalf. An example of such a post office would be your mail server where your website is hosted, and an email service provider like Mailchimp or Mailerlite.

We’ve all received emails that look like they are coming from a friend, but when you open the email there is just some spam or a dodgy link. That practice is called email spoofing. SPF tries to prevent that from happening.  It’s like having a checklist at the post office that says who’s allowed to send mail on your behalf. When your email arrives, any receiving post office can check this list to make sure it’s from an authorized sender (approved post office), keeping out any rogue mail.

So if you always send your mail through post office A, and post office B suddenly receives mail that claims to be from you, but actually comes from any other post office they’ll reject it.

dkim
domainkeys identified mail

DKIM is your unique signature on a sealed letter. It’s like adding a special signature and seal. When it reaches the post office (email server), they check the seal against the one on file. It’s like one of those old-fashioned wax seals on a letter that you may have seen in a movie. It assures the recipient that the letter is authentic and hasn’t been opened on its journey.

So post office B receives mail with an intact seal and sends it on to the recipient. But if the seal is missing or has been tampered with, they’ll discard the message.

DMARC
domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance):

DMARC is your instructions to the receiver about handling questionable mail. It’s like a note attached to the letter, instructing the receiver on what to do if the wax seal is broken or if there are suspicions about the sender. DMARC provides instructions to email receivers on how to handle emails that fail SPF and DKIM checks.

You can choose what you put on this note. At its most basic level you can specify that you don’t have a preference and let the receiver decide. But you can also specify that you would like messages that don’t pass the checks to be either quarantined or rejected. And you can request to receive a note back with what happened with your messages.

So if the message passes all the checks, it is sent on to the receiver. And if not, it gets blocked. You’re optionally notified.

what about spamfilters?

With email there is another gatekeeper after the receiving server, and that’s your email program. This could be Outlook or Gmail or something else. These programs also have spam-filters built in, which look at various things, including the content of the message it receives. If that’s all good, the message goes to the receiver’s inbox, and otherwise it’s sent to the junk-folder. The spam filters look at things like email content (spam words and links), your IP address and blacklists