Starting in February, Gmail and Yahoo are taking additional steps to improve deliverability and block unwanted messages from user's inboxes. (We expect more mailbox providers to join). Here is a breakdown of the requirements for bulk email senders, changes to Engage in response, and how it affects your use of Engage:

1. Senders must authenticate their emails

If you are using the default sending profile, we automatically do this for you. If you have connected your custom domain to Engage or you connected your email service provider (e.g. Mailgun, Amazon SES) to Engage, two (SPF and DKIM) out of the three authentication requirements are already in place. The last one, DMARC, used to be optional but is now required. If you currently do not have DMARC set up, you should have received an email from Engage. There will also be a notification on your Engage dashboard and necessary instructions on how to set it up.

2. Senders must provide an easy way for users to unsubscribe

The new guideline requires an unsubscribe link to be visible in the body of the email. Engage automatically adds an unsubscribe link to outgoing email Campaigns and Automations so this is taken care of. (We allow you to turn this off for important updates). In addition to this, it is also required the email is sent in a way the mailbox provider can show an "Unsubscribe" button beside the email subject. This is called One-Click Unsubscribe (List-unsubscribe header in technical terms). Engage will automatically add this to emails with unsubscription enabled.

The only requirement on your side is to ensure unsubscription is enabled for marketing emails. We recommend you read more about how unsubscription works in Engage and use the global suppression feature. When Global Suppression is enabled, recipients that unsubscribe will not only be removed from the Campaign Lists/Segments or Automation but will not receive any other emails from you.

3. No spamming!

Only send messages users want. And to users that want them. This is to ensure users do not mark your emails as spam. Instead of sending one-message-fit-all campaigns, we recommend you use Segments to target the right users. You can use Segments to create specific user groups (e.g. active users, users that have performed some actions, or users that have not performed some actions) and send your messages to these groups.

In summary, on Engage’s part:

• Your domain authentication is taken care of. We will guide you in setting up DMARC if not already done. We will constantly monitor your domain's authentication to ensure everything is in place.
• Your outgoing marketing emails support one-click unsubscribe headers when unsubscription is enabled.

On your part:

• You will need to add one more DNS record to your server settings for DMARC if it is not yet done. More details on this will be on your account dashboard. It takes just a few minutes and we will guide you through the process.
• Only send emails to people who want it.
• Only send solicited emails. (Don't buy email lists).
• Don’t send emails too frequently.
• Turn on unsubscribe when you send marketing emails.