#176. Gmail & Yahoo 2024 Updates: Everything You Need to Know | Podcast

Vira: 0:41

Hello, hello everyone. Welcome back to Email Einstein, the podcast by Flowium. We are your host, Vira Sadlak and – Andriy Boychuk. Yay! I mean, every time it’s getting smoother and smoother, this little introduction of ours. You guys, we’re happy to have you back. And today we are joined by a very special guest. I’m going to give you a little hint. So you might have heard about Google and Yahoo’s new rules for sending emails. And these new rules, it’s like a big talk in all social media, Twitter, or or X or whatever. And a lot of businesses are stressing out. But don’t worry, we got 2 good news for you. News number 1, first of all, there is no rush. You can keep your focus on holiday season. You can keep your focus on all the campaigns that you prepare. None of these changes will take place until Q1 of 2024. So in fact, we do not recommend to make any major changes until after this holiday season. But good news number 2, we brought a very special person to talk about all of this exciting or not exciting changes. And you know him, we’ve had this guy on our podcast multiple times. So please roll the red carpet for Bobi Nikolovski. Bobi, welcome back.

Bobi: 2:04

Nice to be here again, guys.

Vira: 2:06

Yeah, we’re excited.

Andriy: 2:07

And I’m not sure if you would talk about this, but Bobby is one of the few in the entire world called Klaviyo Champion. Bobby, how many people are having this title?

Bobi: 2:18

Well, the program changed last year. It was 9, this year it’s 14, but I think some people were kicked out because they were not—

Andriy: 2:26

Yeah, but just think about it, like only 14 people in the entire world from all Klaviyo users. This is the guy, and today he will be sharing his knowledge with you So stay tuned. And also at the end of the podcast, we will be talking about one more thing that happening December 1st, 2023, and you must take action and it’s extremely serious and it will affect your deliverability if you don’t take any actions. So stay tuned to the end of this podcast.

Vira: 2:59

I’m excited for this one because I know that’s the one that you will be covering, Andriy, and I’m curious to hear what you have to say. Bobby, do you have like a special like belt like they give in like a box or something for like the champion? champions, like a heavyweight champion of Klaviyo? Like what?

Bobi: 3:14

Like, I mean, I don’t know, they promote us and they give us like shirts and caps and they send us those kind of things. But yeah, and that we are invited to join in the Klaviyo event in the end of the year. So that happened last year, it’s happening again this year. So that, that’s the most fun part when we meet all, all other champions there.

Vira: 3:37

All 13 of them. That’s exciting.

Bobi: 3:40

Yeah, I’m not sure. Again, I’m not sure if everyone would come, but it would be fun. Like, we go through the Klaviyo offices, we get some insights of what Klaviyo is preparing for the next year, discuss a lot of things, how we like the changes that they did over the year. And yeah, we get a lot of product updates in advance.

Andriy: 3:59

So cool.

Vira: 4:00

That’s so cool.

Andriy: 4:01

And I’m excited because, I mean, we’re planning to meet here in New York. Bobi will visit New York and we’ll probably spend a day or half a day together just browsing Manhattan, New York City, which is— I’m extremely excited about.

Vira: 4:16

I’m jealous, you guys.

Bobi: 4:17

Believe me, not more excited than me since I never been there before.

Vira: 4:21

Oh my goodness, you’re gonna see that huge Christmas tree, that huge New York Christmas tree. That has been a dream of mine ever since I was a little girl.

Andriy: 4:28

So my sister moved to Florida like 2 or 2 years ago and she’s like, why do you still live in in New York, and I couldn’t give her a good explanation or an answer until probably last week. Every time I go to New York City, and Bobi, you said like, oh, you’ve been there so many times, so maybe for you it’s not as exciting. But every time you go to the city, to Manhattan, it’s like, it gives you so much energy and like, it’s changing so often and so fast that like, the same street you walk like 10 times can be different each time you walk. So that’s why, I mean, I love the city. I love New York. And probably that’s why I live here and never move from here.

Bobi: 5:14

Right. Sounds like such a fun place. We’ll see.

Vira: 5:17

Yeah. Well, Bobi, let’s talk about the things that are even more exciting. Deliverability. Yay. But seriously, though, tell us about this, like, key updates. I think there are like 3 key updates that Gmail and Yahoo have announced for 2024 regarding the inbox protection. So tell us about them. Well, what are they?

Bobi: 5:42

It’s not just 3, it’s more, but the 3 are main things and they’re not the same for Gmail and Yahoo. The thing is they’re similar, but Gmail’s are more advanced. So if you get in line with Gmail’s new rules, you’ll be in line with Yahoo’s also. So the main things are setting up some things on your DNS records to be more protected and more secure, like SPF, DKIM, DMARC records. The other thing is to align and to make sure that when you’re sending email, your from name and your domain that is authenticated for sending, they’re matching. So you shouldn’t be sending from email with one domain and then you have to take authentication to be on another.

Andriy: 6:32

So Bobi, those are like, listen, I’m in this industry since what, 2017? But I was doing email marketing even earlier. But even now, I like, I don’t understand those. I do and I Google a few times, just try to understand. But like in simple term, I’ll try to translate it to very simple like life thing and you correct me if I’m wrong. So right now, like what’s going on in the world right now with those like sending dedicated domain, it’s like I’m traveling and I’m traveling, let’s say to Macedonia. I want to visit you from New York. So basically I go to plane, I board a plane without a passport, just have a ticket, show them the ticket and they’re like, oh, good to go. I go to Macedonia, there’s no passport control, I go through it. But what those all records mean, certificates that we need to set up for sending the dedicated sending domain, all those like things, it’s basically like a getting passport. I’m going to airport here. in New York, they are like, oh, you are Andriy Boychuk. Okay, you’re going to Macedonia. In Macedonia, I’m landing and they’re like, oh, who are you? Here’s my passport. Oh yes, we can prove you that you are who you are and we will let you go into the country. Is it a good analogy or—

Bobi: 7:55

Well, I don’t know. It may be, but it also may be like, since you should have had those things in advance also, like some of the things are good practices that they’re—

Andriy: 8:06

But those are good practices, not like requirements. Yeah.

Bobi: 8:10

The good practices now become requirements and that is the difference. So I would see it like maybe like, and also this is not a requirement for all of the inbox providers. So I would say this is like a visa, not a passport. You still need the passport, but you don’t need visa for everywhere. You need just for specific places. This would be it in a way. But yeah.

Andriy: 8:32

I see.

Vira: 8:33

That’s a good analogy, guys. I love that analogy.

Bobi: 8:36

Because no one would, plain or not, no one would put to go, would allow you to go in a country without it. passport.

Andriy: 8:42

That makes sense. Makes sense. So basically in some places you need visa. For example, if I want to go to, I don’t know, North Korea, because you have American—

Vira: 8:51

like Turkey, you can do it anywhere.

Andriy: 8:54

No, but in Turkey, like I need a visa in Turkey because I’m a US citizen. I need a visa in Turkey. It’s like just you pay money and that’s it. You’re done. But I still—

Bobi: 9:05

It’s a technicality. Yeah, it’s a technicality that you need to do to get another visa.

Andriy: 9:12

So in my case, in my life, Turkey, it’s a Gmail. So they require the visa. But the other country, let’s say when I went to— where we went, Tanzania? I— no, no, sorry, I’m wrong. Tanzania doesn’t require visa. Let’s say if I went to Mexico, they don’t require visa. You just need the passport. Yeah. Yeah.

Vira: 9:34

And if you go to Canada, you only need driver license. Did you know that? I mean, the extended one. Yeah, yeah, there is.

Andriy: 9:41

Yeah, they give you such a hard time, it’s better to listen.

Vira: 9:45

Okay, well, enough about Andriy’s traveling history. Let’s talk about the authentication. Bobi, what is this DMARC or DMARC? How do you even pronounce this thing? This is like the DMARC. Okay, cool. Authentication protocol. Explain what it is and what are these like other things?

Bobi: 10:05

I can’t explain DMARC without explaining SPF and DKIM because they’re all connected.

Vira: 10:11

SPF is a sunscreen, that one I know. So let’s talk about the DKIM. Okay, sorry, never mind. Let’s do this again.

Bobi: 10:18

I don’t know, I’m not using sunscreen. I’m staying away from the sun. No, so the thing is the SPF is used to make sure that your IP address or your email that you’re sending is authenticated with the providers. You’re proofing that the person who is sending the email actually have the authentication to send email from that email. DKIM records are, this is like a cryptography thing. So you are having a private and public key for your domain. The email that you’re sending is kind of coded. So you’re sending it the coded version with the, like you’re sending the email as a private key. And then the inbox provider have the public key. So when we are sending it to Gmail, they have the public key and then they can decode the message and confirm that. Okay, this is what was sent in the first place. So that is just authentication, and it needs SPF. And then the DMARC record is just what to happen if the first 2 fail. So if you don’t have SPF and they can’t verify that you have, that you are the right person, that you are allowed to send emails, or if you send an email and there is no public key, or the public key and private key don’t match, then DMARC is setting up what to happen in that case. There are several things that need to be set up, but the usual beginner setup is nothing to happen, just because you can request— that is like a report that you can get, tried, what, who tried to send from your email, what was tried to be sent from email. It’s like you are getting a report of all the failed attempts. for mailing from your email. And so yeah, they’re all connected in a way. So the first 2 are authentications, different authentications, but still authentication. And DMARC is the 3rd one, which is providing you a report of what happened with the first 2 when they failed.

Vira: 12:16

Right. And just like to give like some technical background without getting into like nitty-gritty of like technical stuff, when you say to set up a record, what is the process? Just like briefly.

Bobi: 12:28

Yeah, because these are all technical things and they sound hard to understand. People are scared of it, but the actual process of setting up is really simple. You’re just creating 3 different TXT records in your DNS, in your hosting provider. So 3 different DNS records with TXT, and then you put the hosting is different for each one of them. So if you just Google on how to set up SPF record, you will have a simple explanation in it, and it’s just copying 3 lines of code. Like, it’s pretty simple. It can be done— like, you can set up all 3 of them in 5 minutes. It’s as simple As simple as that. Much simpler than how it sounds when you’re explaining it.

Vira: 13:07

Right.

Andriy: 13:07

Bobi, so how will those Yahoo, Gmail, and maybe in the future other provider changes will impact the experience, user experience, not the sender, but the receiver?

Bobi: 13:22

Well, first of all, they will have, they should have, like as with every rule, people find the workaround with it. But this should lower the amount of spam emails, of unwanted emails, of you getting phishing or spoofing emails. Just short explanation, spoofing is when someone else uses your email to send emails like it’s coming. Like for example, if I use my email to send an email to you, that’s like a normal thing and what should happen. But if you are using my email to send email to someone else, that is spoofing. And this would be preventing with the SPF record setup. Phishing still, it’s hard. We discussed this a few days ago. It’s hard to stop phishing because this is simply other people’s action and that doesn’t mean that it requires your information. They can just simply send a different email and try to harm you.

Andriy: 14:17

Bobby, so that email, you know, like how it’s called when they do— so let’s say it happened to us in the past when they use our domain flowium.com act like Flowium. How that is called spoofing?

Bobi: 14:31

So yeah, that is the thing. They are different. So spoofing is when someone is sending emails from Flowium domain as it is Flowium, but it’s not Flowium. So that is spoofing. And phishing is what they want to achieve with that domain, with that email. So if in that domain they’re trying to get your data, then that is phishing. Yeah, but that doesn’t necessarily need to be from your email. I can send you a random email from another email trying to to fish for your details.

Andriy: 14:59

But those records, and this is what Gmail and other providers trying to like to do, is to prevent spoofing, correct? So other people cannot use the brand’s domains.

Bobi: 15:11

Yeah.

Andriy: 15:12

Like, because right now, right now, like, sorry for interrupting, but right now, if you will say Nike or whatever your brand is, anybody in the world who has some technical background can send pretend to be you and kind of charge people money, collect information, or do whatever they want to do.

Bobi: 15:33

In a way, yes. And I don’t think it is as simple as just using Nike domain to send an email. But yeah, they can do that. And with this, they are trying to stop because usually spoofing and phishing, they’re interconnected. You’re spoofing with the idea of trying to get some data. I’m pretending to be someone else. Like, for example, what they used to do is I’m pretending to be from some credit card company to try to get your personal information. And I’m using the credit card domain to— I’m spoofing their domain and their email address to send the email like I’m sending it from their domain, and then I’m phishing for details there.

Vira: 16:13

I see.

Andriy: 16:13

So on one hand, it—

Bobi: 16:15

I was just saying, with this new thing, this is supposed to be stopped. Phishing can’t be stopped because simply I send you from my personal mail. I can send you an email that is trying to phish for some details, you know, like those emails that you’re getting, you inherited $1 million or whatever. Like all of us receive those emails and they’re not sent from spoofed emails. Most of the times they’re just random domains sending it to you, which people buy and use it to send spam emails. But yeah.

Vira: 16:43

So that Nigerian prince who wrote me an email, it was spoofing? My goodness.

Bobi: 16:49

No, that was phishing.

Vira: 16:50

I thought we had something serious going. Anyways. Bobi, will these changes like affect all of the businesses, or are there like certain like threshold of the businesses that need to take care of these things?

Bobi: 17:53

Well, I’m not sure what exactly you mean about only some of the businesses. Like everyone who is sending them emails should do this. And so yeah, the limit is 5,000 emails for Gmail, for example.

Vira: 18:05

What do you mean the limit? Like what?

Bobi: 18:07

Well, well, the limit is what Gmail is saying. If you are sending— this is only applying to people who are sending bulk emails. So you’re sending to group of people. If I send you like from my Gmail account to you one email, I don’t need this. But if I’m— I want to send from my Gmail account to 500 people, to 5,000 people, then I need to have this set up. And same thing goes like this is on a personal base, but same thing goes for brand. Like for example, if a brand has 500 subscribers, probably they don’t need it at this moment, but at some point they will. So it’s always good to set it up in advance and to comply with the rules.

Andriy: 18:46

Thank you for explanation, Bobi. I read in the article that we’re trying to kind of took over from Klaviyo about Yahoo, Gmail, The thing what kind of was off to me and which I personally didn’t like from marketing perspective, and I’m not sure if I’m understanding this correctly. So Vera and back in the day was Alyssa was covering send from. So for example, we are sending send from Andriy Boychuk, send from Flowium, send from Chubbies. And they give us, Vera gave examples from Chubbies when they use send from. like Sent From Snowman or Sent From some weird name. So they were playing Sent From— they were changing that naming. But according to this article, what I understood, it has to be the same as the record. If you’re Flowium, it’s Flowium.

Bobi: 19:38

I understand what you’re saying because I had the same confusion in my mind and it didn’t make sense. So how I accepted to understand that part is because they are not specifying, they’re not specifying if they mean from name or from email. So I want to think that it is from email that they are talking about. So when you set a from email, for example, your email@flowium.com should match the dedicated sending domain that you set up for this account, which is in this case would be flowium.com. So you shouldn’t be sending— the from name shouldn’t be your personal email address.

Andriy: 20:16

I see what you’re saying.

Bobi: 20:17

That is how I understood it. I may be wrong because it was not explained really well, but I think it’s about the from email and not the from name.

Andriy: 20:53

I think you’re correct because they gave an example of you, you’re not able to use Gmail or any other like personal inbox provider. So you have to use—

Bobi: 21:03

They mentioned that, but it was still not 100% clear on what they meant with it.

Andriy: 21:07

Yeah. And by the way, I mean, we— it’s a secret, correct? The algorithm of any inbox provider, it’s a secret because if we know the algorithm, we can kind of find the ways to kind of hack this. So everything that we’re talking about, it’s a good, educated, based on experience suggestion and based on some information that those inbox providers gave us.

Bobi: 21:34

I don’t think so. I think the rules for sending and these specific things that we are talking about, they are out in the open. What is hidden and the algorithm is how to reach exactly inbox and not promotional and like those kind of things.

Andriy: 21:51

That’s interesting.

Bobi: 21:52

But the rules are the rules. Like they’re telling you the rules, what you need to do. So they’re not telling you, like, for example, the algorithm may not tell you what proportion of the email should be text versus image. They’re not telling you what are the best, like they have some algorithm that that is defining things, how to properly put you into inbox. And they’re not telling us that because people will find a way to work around it if they know. But the rules, what needs to happen for you to have to reach the inbox in the first place, I think those are not secret. They’re pretty much out there.

Vira: 22:26

Right. And you mentioned that there are like a lot of these requirements, but the main 3 are authentication for your sending domain. So that’s the number one, we kind of covered it. Aligning with the desktop.

Bobi: 22:36

The authentication, sorry for interrupting, but to make that full, like the authentication is connected to the dedicated sending domain.

Vira: 22:44

Right.

Bobi: 22:44

And we are not talking much about it because it’s our rule in our company. When a client gets to work with us, we need to set the dedicated sending domain from the start. But not everyone is doing that, this, and they will have to. So now with this change, everyone will have to have a dedicated sending domain. Shared sending domains will not work anymore with Gmail and Yahoo. So everyone will have to set this up together with the DNS records like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. And then to use the From name, that is, the From email of the, the email should have the domain that is dedicated sending domain. And that is how this is connected all. By the way, just to mention, IPs are still okay to be shared. So no one is asking anyone to set up a dedicated IP address. They can still be shared. So people that are using platforms like Klaviyo, they can rely on what was happening there before.

Vira: 23:41

Right.

Andriy: 23:41

If you’re still with us here, I’m talking to the listeners or viewers, and if you don’t understand what is a sending domain, dedicated sending domain, it’s when you send out email next to your send from, there’s like weird domain which is Klaviyo XYZ, like weird, or Mailchimp or any other like weird domain after it’s like sent via, V-I-A, And it shows a domain, that means you are sending through shared sending domain. And what we today, what we are talking about, we need to set up a dedicated that you don’t have that kind of extension. It shows only your domain.

Vira: 24:21

Right. And the third big thing that we kind of touched on at the beginning, but I want you, Bobi, to like expand on this. One of the requirements is to making the unsubscribe link very visible. It’s a key requirement now? I mean, it’s a given that if it’s difficult for your subscribers to unsubscribe from your email, they will like send you to spam box, which can damage your deliverability and your reputation. But like, why is it the requirement right now? What needs to be done? What are the best practices of implementing that like unsubscribe method?

Bobi: 24:56

Yeah, first, to be more precise on what the requirement is. So the requirement is not to be more visible. But not to be only part of the footer. What they want is you to include it into the content of the email somewhere above the footer so people will be able to see it. It shouldn’t be just a footer with same color or where you don’t even notice it. So what they’re asking is put it on some other place in the content of the email and make it visible there. So it’s kind of 2 requirements make it more visible, but also add it to the content. For people who are using Klaviyo, they won’t need to do anything about it. For people who are using other platforms, they will need to remember to do this. And why is different for Klaviyo? Because Klaviyo came up with— I’m not sure if this will happen, but this is what they said, that they will, that it will happen— is they will come up with a banner that will show up on top of all emails sent through Klaviyo where the unsubscribe link would be pretty visible. So you can’t pick or choose to use this or not. It will be there for all the emails. Like for example, right now, I’m not sure if you guys noticed in the past, if you’re using Klaviyo and you’re trying to send an email without unsubscribe button, what Klaviyo does is it doesn’t warn you. It just sends the email and automatically adds the unsubscribe button on the bottom and adds another block on the bottom of the email. So this happened, this same thing will happen in the future from what Klaviyo said, but now they will add a banner on the top of the email. And one other change with this is this should be like one-click unsubscribe and it should be really easy for people to unsubscribe. It shouldn’t lead to a preference page. It shouldn’t lead to a complicated unsubscribe page. It should be like pretty simple click and unsubscribe button. And in Klaviyo, I’m not sure if I understood it really well, but how I understood it, that it wouldn’t even lead you to another page. If you just click that one, you would be unsubscribed. I’m not sure if that’s the case. It may be a bad example. Someone may click it by mistake. But anyway, that is how I understood it.

Vira: 26:58

That’s really interesting.

Andriy: 26:59

No, I mean, it has to lead you somewhere. Like maybe it’s when you click, you’re unsubscribing automatically because right now I, I was signed up for a few newsletters where it’s one-click unsubscribe, but it has to confirm kind of you click and it just redirects you to a different page in saying you are unsubscribed. But I do understand why they doing these rules. I still subscribe for years to some newsletter that I cannot unsubscribe. It’s like, and some of them, like I love Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. And once I joined his community on Circle, I believe circle.co or something, the community thing, and I cannot unsubscribe from that. I need to log in and I forgot my login. I don’t want to reset my password, but I need to log in to change my some notification things or there’s other platforms that start sending me things and I just mark it spam because I couldn’t unsubscribe. But I think I still receive that because it’s even I mark it spam, they still sending me some, they getting to my inbox somehow.

Vira: 28:04

Right. Yeah. I still receive my emails from, from like when I lived in Ukraine. These guys don’t mess with them. It’s like impossible to unsubscribe.

Bobi: 28:12

Yeah.

Andriy: 28:12

Yeah.

Vira: 28:13

But Bobi, I do have a follow-up question though. About that, like, one-click unsubscribe process or like 2 clicks or whatever. So some of my clients, we have this flows that basically instead of like giving them the only option of like unsubscribing, they’re clicking on the unsubscribe link, they’re going to this like custom unsubscribe page where we offer them the discount as a last resort to like keep them basically. And if they agree to receive the discount code in exchange of not leaving the list, they will get another email from us. with a discount code. Will this still be a thing or will we need to like rethink our strategy here?

Bobi: 28:54

I think it will. And I think they will allow us to have unsubscribe that is more complicated and not just one click. They’re saying that one, we should have one that is in the copy and it should be like one-click unsubscribe. But I never read that you can’t have another one. So if we, for example, if it’s, let’s say we keep the footer unsubscribe as it is and the the top banner that Klaviyo will add, we use it as one-click, then it would still be an option. But with that specific additional one that will be added from Klaviyo, I don’t think we will be able to do anything like that.

Andriy: 29:30

But let me ask you, but like, in your opinion, how do you think they will track, like inbox provider, they will track that you clicked but you’re still receiving emails? This is how I mean, what system, like what they are—

Bobi: 29:44

Are you saying like how, for example, Gmail track what happened?

Andriy: 29:49

Yes.

Bobi: 29:49

Yeah, I don’t think they care what happened. I think they care that you have it in the email and they can look with in the code about that. Like they are checking the codes to see you have 2, for example, different unsubscribe links and one is direct unsubscribe link, which is what they want. It’s a code thing.

Andriy: 30:09

Do you think so? Do you? But different ESPs have different codes. So ActiveCampaign has to talk with different ESPs.

Bobi: 30:15

Yes, and they’re collaborating like how we are talking to our clients. Like for example, Klaviyo is in a way Gmail client. So they’re communicating about this stuff and probably Klaviyo will provide the code that would be like this one-click unsubscribe that they will add, they will provide to Gmail and then Gmail will have it and it will require that all Klaviyo emails will have it also. So I assume something like that. I don’t know, like this may be the secretive thing that we mentioned before that they don’t tell us how they check it. I’m pretty sure that they are able to check it though, if you have this in the email or not. Just don’t ask me how because I have no idea.

Andriy: 30:55

I mean, this, I have a very kind of basic question. I mean, one of another requirements to keep Spam rate low. I mean, it’s in any case is good practice to keep the spam rate low, but how, like, are we talking lower? Are we talking the same or are there specific number benchmarks?

Bobi: 31:19

There is specific number. It should be below 0.3% and I don’t think we have any client who is above that number.

Andriy: 31:27

So, but 0 point— oh no, 0.3.

Bobi: 31:29

Yeah.

Andriy: 31:30

No, hold on. So you mean 0.3%?

Bobi: 31:34

Yeah, 0.3%.

Andriy: 31:35

Or 0.03%?

Bobi: 31:37

0.3%, less than 1%, but 1/3 of a percent.

Andriy: 31:42

But this is a lot.

Bobi: 31:43

No, it’s not.

Andriy: 31:44

Isn’t it a lot?

Bobi: 31:45

I mean, it’s a lot to reach. So if you have that many spam people, then you’re having— you’re doing something wrong. Your list is not correct. Like on 100 emails, This is not even one person on 1,000 emails. This is 3 people. So how is this a lot?

Andriy: 32:02

You know, but I’m just thinking I might be wrong, but we do a lot of audits of our— we do internally as well as externally. And I don’t think I ever saw such a high spam rate.

Bobi: 32:15

Yeah, that is what I’m saying. Like it would be if you are following the best practices from before or if you are following the rules now, it would be hard for you to get to that number and to have trouble with Gmail.

Andriy: 32:28

I want to check our numbers.

Bobi: 32:30

Are you talking about—

Andriy: 32:32

Yeah. And it looks like let’s do for entire year because it’s like last month we had zero, which is maybe we are like doing something right.

Bobi: 32:41

Hopefully we are.

Andriy: 32:44

I mean, it looks zero like, I don’t know. So maybe, I mean, we have unsubscribes of course, but spam complaints.

Bobi: 32:53

Well, that is what should happen when you are only emailing emailing people who want to receive your emails. Like, if I subscribe to receive your emails, why would I report spam? If I don’t want it at some point, I would click unsubscribe. Or as you said, like, if you don’t have the option to unsubscribe, that is when I will click spam. But we are not sending any emails without unsubscribe buttons, so why would someone complain?

Andriy: 33:16

Correct. Yes. I don’t know, maybe they mad at me because I said something weird. I’m just kidding.

Vira: 33:24

Yeah, or maybe they can’t unsubscribe like in Andriy’s example. But that’s where the good practices come in place, right?

Andriy: 33:30

Yeah, this upsets me a lot. So just as you either as a brand or as a, if you provide service, make sure it’s, it’s very clear to unsubscribe even in 2 steps, but don’t hide it because I see a lot of brands do black in black letters on a black background, unsubscribe, or a white one on a white one. So it’s basically, it’s not visible.

Vira: 33:55

Right, right. Yeah. Bobi, you already mentioned that it’s not probably a good idea to do something like around the holiday season, all of this like changes and stuff like that. But when should people start preparing for these new requirements? And what are the tools and resources you can recommend like to help them navigate Well, depending when everyone is listening to this podcast, but if in case they’re listening— End of November, you guys, you’re listening to this podcast at the end of November.

Bobi: 34:30

Yeah, but someone may— that is when maybe it will be released, but someone may be listening it much later, so they may already be late to the game. So if it is 2024, you should set it up immediately. If it is before, you have time, so try to set it up as soon as possible. Up before 2024 starts, but no rush on doing it before the holiday season because it may mess up for a while, uh, with, with everything. If a lot of people change it, it will be hard for inbox providers to track everything that is new. You may make a mistake that you’ll need tweaking, and you don’t want to make mistakes before Black Friday, Cyber Monday, because before Christmas sales and stuff. So Anytime that you have big sales or big holidays that you want to, you have a strategy around, it’s not good to make big changes because it may mess up something.

Andriy: 35:26

How long does it take? Let’s say, Bobi, I want you to change it for Flowium. I mean, we are using dedicated sending domain, but let’s say we use, let’s assume sending a shared one. And let’s say I ask you to change it and you are changing, for example, today. this afternoon, how long does it— can I still send emails or do I need to wait until it takes in effect? Because it’s like, what, 24 hours to update the record?

Bobi: 35:55

That depends from the hosting provider and it, it can take up to 48 hours. We’ve seen it take up to 48 hours, but we also seen it take place immediately. So it depends from where your domain is hosted. The change for all of these things to do, all of these things, it wouldn’t It shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes. So it’s not like—

Andriy: 36:17

No, no, I got that part. But let’s say I’m— I mean, maybe Flowium was a bad example. Let’s say I’m fashion and apparel brand, like, and we are sending like promos, product launches every day. And that thing, like, do I need to wait until it takes effect or I can still send campaigns?

Bobi: 36:38

No, because before you click verify, nothing is changed. So even if you set up all these things in the background, even if you’re setting up the dedicated sending domain, or like it is called differently for different email providers, like we just recently did this for Mailchimp, I think, and they’re called like verifying the domain. In Klaviyo, it’s dedicated sending domain. In Mailchimp, it’s verifying verifying the domains, like until you click the button to verify and the sender, who is in this case Klaviyo or Mailchimp, until they confirm that they have the DNS record that they require, nothing would change. And so for the— I’m talking about the dedicated sending domain setup and about the SPF, DMARC, those kind of records, I don’t think that would be a problem if you set it up at any time, as long as you set it up correctly.

Vira: 37:39

So basically what you’re saying, while the setup is happening, while this approval or whatever is happening, our email services won’t be down, right? We can still like be sending during that 48-hour window. Is that what you’re saying?

Bobi: 37:51

Yeah, that’s for sure. That’s for sure.

Vira: 37:53

Yeah. Okay. That’s good news. That’s good news. I didn’t realize this is how it’s happening. Andriy, I know you have—

Bobi: 37:58

This is happening in the background on, on the domain level, so it’s nothing connected to, to you specifically. So if you have— if you can send right now, you can send emails without SPF, DMARC, and DKIM. If you set them up, they may require time to activate, but until they activate, you will be sending as you were sending before. They are created, they’re not just not active. Once they activate, you will start using them, and the emails that you will send in the future will be sent with those things. But again, as long as you set up, set them up properly, there shouldn’t be any issue.

Vira: 38:35

I see. I see. Andriy, you have an extra little tip for all of the people who are sending to Gmails. Yeah.

Andriy: 38:45

So Gmail, Gmail, or I mean Google announced earlier this year, I believe it was in the summer, that December 1st, 2023. So it’s like in a matter of a few days, They will deactivate any accounts that have not been used for 2 years or longer. So if you don’t do list hygiene of your list, it will dramatically affect you. The hypothesis is, they didn’t confirm that, they will convert those accounts to what’s called honeypots, that spam traps. Like if you are sending to them, they will assume that you are sending spam because there’s no way those accounts opted into your emails. So, Bobby, what is your take? What people can do? I mean, just the regular list cleaning, but what else can they do to kind of so they don’t hurt their deliverability with this update?

Bobi: 39:50

Well, for these specific things, there isn’t an easy thing, like create a segment, like segment, create a segment of people who didn’t open at any point any of your emails in the last 2 years and just don’t send to them. That would be the easiest way if you don’t want to go to— well, yeah, you can suppress also, but you know how our clients are with suppressing anyone.

Andriy: 40:16

But no, but I don’t understand this thing, like, like it’s not, it’s not, but it’s, it’s an It’s ego. It’s like, because my list is such a big— yeah, but it’s useless and you’re paying for this.

Vira: 40:29

Yeah, we actually want to—

Bobi: 40:30

People don’t understand. Like, we had clients saying like, we don’t want to lose this customer. And I’m like, if you’re losing a subscriber, that doesn’t mean that this person still can’t go and buy from your website. They’re just not using your emails. Like, we had situations where people received 100 emails in 100 days and they didn’t open even one and they still want to send to these people. Like, I don’t know what to tell you, but that’s not bad, not good.

Vira: 40:59

One of the actually the segments that you, Bobi, suggested us to create, it wasn’t like 2 days, 2 years, that’s for sure. But we’ve created this segment like haven’t received or opened any emails in the last something like 60 days or something. So that was like our we were trying to like reengage those people who we haven’t like emailed for some reason or who haven’t received any emails from us. And that was a good strategy because we were able to like reactivate a lot of those people. But with 2 years, nah, these people are dead to you. Just like remove them and move on. Live your best life. Yeah. Bobi, if you would summarize everything that we talked about today in like a few sentences, what would be your recommendations to the brands with all of the upcoming changes?

Bobi: 41:45

Well, the recommendations first of all would be not to rush this, to make sure that they understand what they’re doing. The best time probably to do this is after Christmas or whatever, before the new year starts. Some of the things I’m not sure if they are available, you know, they should also contact whoever they’re using as email sending platform. Mostly we are using Klaviyo, but also use few others. But anyway, Okay. Klaviyo said that they will make this thing available from 1st of February. So I assume the first quarter is when they mentioned that this should be done in the first quarter. What their meaning is that it would be live and official from the second quarter. So you can use the first quarter to, to make the changes. So I don’t think anyone will still have any issues if they send as they were in the Q1, but it is suggested to change it as soon as possible. and after the holiday season. Apart from that, everything else I would suggest everyone do, even if this is not a requirement, because again, those are good practices that everyone should have. I think it would be good for everyone, both for the senders and for the receivers of the emails.

Andriy: 42:59

And I would like to kind of make an offer to you, to the listener. If you reach out to our team, just go to flowium.com/contact, we’ll set it up. up for you at no cost. But if you are not marketer, but the brand, we’ll do it for you. Like we’ll have our team of experts to see, to add those records, make sure verified and like you are in a good place moving forward with those updates. Does it sound—

Vira: 43:28

That’s a cool offer.

Andriy: 43:28

As a good offer?

Vira: 43:30

That’s a super generous offer.

Bobi: 43:31

I mean, I guess.

Vira: 43:34

Yeah. Well, Bobi, thank you so much. Honestly, I had like a lot of anxiety going into this episode with all of this like new changes, you know, but you explained them so well. Thank you so much. You guys, if you have any questions to Bobi or to us, please reach out to us through either our website or through our Flowium WhatsApp. We’re there for you. We’re happy to answer all of your questions.

Andriy: 43:57

Bobi, are you part of our WhatsApp chat? Are you?

Bobi: 44:01

I don’t think I am.

Andriy: 44:02

Are you not? Okay. So just go to flowium.com/whatsapp and join it. I mean, at least Vira and I are there. There’s not much activity, but we invite you to, to ask us questions, make suggestions how we can make this podcast better because we are, I mean, we’re delivering for you. So please tell us how we can make it better or what would you like to hear from us.

Vira: 44:28

Thank you so much, you guys. Thank you so much for coming. We hope to have you here next year.

Bobi: 44:32

Thank you guys for inviting me. Bye.