Stand and deliver, your emails or your strife

Not to be alarmist or anything, but did you know that, if your customers have Gmail or Yahoo! accounts, soon your emails might stop reaching them? What’s more, your company’s ‘sending reputation’ might be sullied in the process.

Yes, this year, changes to these two big email providers’ authentication requirements could see your emails rotting in Junk files, smelling of Spam or getting spurned and returned.

And given how much we all rely on emails for business transactions, updates, advertising, and sales, we know how much our businesses would suffer if those missives weren’t delivered.

Why are the rules around Gmail and Yahoo! email authentication changing?

By tightening the rules around senders’ authenticity, all Yahoo! and Google are doing is turning what was previously considered best practice into a requirement. In doing so, they are protecting their users from unwanted, bulk emails and ensuring they only take delivery from verified sending accounts.

This puts a stop to all that atrocious behaviour that spoof accounts can get up to, as well as keeping phishing and spamming under wraps.

It’s the bulk senders that are being targeted, primarily, but that doesn’t mean smaller volume, transactional emails won’t be affected too. So, whether you’re sending a few hundred emails a week or several thousand, here at Jammed we recommend you act now to ensure you don’t fall foul later.

What do I need to do to comply with Gmail and Yahoo! requirements?

To ensure ours and our clients' emails continue to land in Gmail and Yahoo! inboxes, we at Jammed have taken the following steps and we recommend you do the same.

1. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) authentication

DKIM is a way of detecting forged email sender addresses, used in phishing and email spam. With DKIM, your customers can see that an email they’ve received from your company is authorized by the owner of that domain.

2. Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) verification

DMARC is a way of protecting your email address from unauthorized use from scammers, and from phishing and spoofing attacks.

Email providers use DMARC to determine if you’re using the DKIM records to verify your email provenance. Usually, if you’re using DKIM, you’ll also want to set up DMARC.

3. Custom bounce return-path

You can do more to ensure your emails are delivered without issue and with added legitimacy guarantees by setting up a custom bounce return-path.

Custom bounce return-paths are used by email providers to send you bounce notifications or to let you know if there’s an issue with an email address you’re sending to. All you need to do to set one up is add a CNS DNS record to your domain settings.

If you’re unsure how to carry out any of these steps, contact your domain provider for support (well, we all know you’ll Google it first, but we can’t be seen to recommend that).

If you’re a Jammed customer, we’ve set out all you need to know in your Website settings, so just follow the instructions there. Easy!

To check out how the Jammed booking app can help you streamline and grow your studio business, pop on over. If you know all you need to know about Jammed, join our droves of satisfied customers and sign up why don’t you!