Most beauty and grooming businesses rely on email for marketing or as a communication touchpoint for their clients. That means they’ll likely be impacted by recent major updates Google and Yahoo have made to their email spam filtering policies.
The good news is, many of these updates are policies already fulfilled by competent email vendors or professional hosts for domains that send email.
Other updates will require salon or barbershop owners or solopreneurs to tweak their domain settings to ensure their emails make it to client inboxes and not their spam folders. (If you haven't had a conversation with your domain host or IT professional about this, now's the time.)
Here’s what business owners need to know:
Google Spam Filter Changes
For businesses emailing Gmail users: most of Google's new requirements are standard protocols already in place for domains that aren't trying to send spam or malicious emails. You can tap onto Google’s “requirements for all senders” here.
Small business owners will likely need to make one change: authenticating their domain by adding a DMARC record (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) to their domain settings.
There are stricter requirements for “bulk senders,” who send more than 5,000 emails to Gmail accounts per day.
They are required to authenticate their emails; allow for easy unsubscription; and stay under a reported spam threshold. Here are their protocols:
- Turn on DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) for their domain;
- Set up DMARC email alignment and authentication;
- Align the domain in the From field with the DKIM or SPF (Sender Policy Framework) domain;
- Support one-click unsubscribe; and
- Include a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the message body.
Yahoo Spam Filter Changes
The updates to Yahoo Mail are similar to the ones made by Google. The requirements for senders to Yahoo or AOL domains are found here, and in general, making the changes necessary for Google (above) will comply with Yahoo’s updated policies.
Yahoo’s recommendations also include:
- Verify you're only sending mail to users who specifically requested it.
- Honor the frequency of the list's intent. Don't start sending daily emails to subscribers of your weekly or monthly mailing; and
- Don't purchase mailing lists or subscribe users by having an opt-in checkbox automatically checked on your website.
No, Really, This is Good For Business
Generally, these updated policies are good for everyone. They will prevent far more malicious or nuisance emails from clogging up inboxes and scamming email recipients.
They also require businesses to ensure their email communication and marketing policies are, indeed, effective — and that type of reckoning is always valuable for a thriving enterprise.
Not only do business owners have to ensure their email sending practices comply with the new policies, but they need to review their email content for quality.
Beyond authentication, both Google and Yahoo have tightened up their reliance on user engagement to filter spam. Emails from senders that have consistently low open, read, or interaction rates are at greater risk of being marked as spam.
As a rule, it’s a good idea for business owners to review their email engagement rates regularly to check if they’re getting traction with their target audience. Make sure your client email list is up-to-date — if you don’t already, ask clients at booking or check-in to confirm their email address.
If weak engagement suggests your email content is stale, consider hiring a marketing professional to help craft and send strategic emails that are engaging, relevant, and valuable to your clients.
Email remains an effective tool for business owners to communicate with and market to their clients. Take the time to ensure that yours stays sharpened.