Google/Yahoo Spam Protection 2024 - Setting up SPF and DKIM email authentication

[C_Blakeley]

Hello Community, 

I'm seeking guidance regarding the Google/Yahoo Spam Protection changes coming into play Feb 2024, in particular, I'm reviewing the requirements  for 'senders whom send 5000 emails per day' and the SPF and DKIM email authentication and has a few queries I'm hoping you can help with.

Email sender guidelines - Gmail Help (google.com) 

- Am I correct to assume that Google/Yahoo is referring to a companies entire domain where guidance mentions 'senders whom send 5000 emails per day'? As in an entire email domain such as including internal and external email broadcasts, marketing comms, etc

- Regarding the '5000 per day' - how is this defined? for larger marketing campaigns, we may send in excess of 5000 emails perhaps once per quarter which would include gmail/yahoo email addresses, so not every day, but occasionally. In this case, is the recommendation to still set up both SPF and DKIM? 

Thank you 

Cathy 

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Our reading of “5000” is that it doesn’t have to be consistent — it’s not a median # of emails over time. It’s literally on any day you send 5000, you will be subject to the stricter rules.

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As in an entire email domain such as including internal and external email broadcasts, marketing comms, etc

- Regarding the '5000 per day' - how is this defined? for larger marketing campaigns, we may send in excess of 5000 emails perhaps once per quarter which would include gmail/yahoo email addresses

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It means 5000 @gmail.com or 5000 @yahoo.com addresses. Internal emails make no difference, and it’s not a count of all your external emails (nor could they really know this).

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 this case, is the recommendation to still set up both SPF and DKIM? 

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Do not be concerned about SPF with regard to Marketo. If you’re on a standard shared Marketo instance, your domain’s SPF record will never be used.

For Marketo make sure all emails using From: user@example.com are DKIM-signed by example.com.

For emails outside of Marketo using From: user@example.com, your corporate IT team may wish to DKIM-sign and/or use SPF. They have to make sure 1 of these 2 authentication methods is set up correctly in order to then deploy a DMARC record, which should be your end goal.

[C_Blakeley]

Hi Sanford, 

Thank you for your detailed response. Its much appreciated and thank you for clarifying. 

Cathy