Gmail and Yahoo's sender rules, in plain English

Since 2024, Gmail and Yahoo require authentication, easy unsubscribes and low spam rates. What that means for cold email.

In February 2024 Gmail and Yahoo started enforcing rules for anyone sending to their users. Most of them apply to every sender; a few apply to bulk senders (around 5,000 messages a day to Gmail).

The rules

• Authenticate your domain. SPF and DKIM for everyone; DMARC for bulk senders. The From address should match the domain you authenticate.
• Make unsubscribing easy. Bulk senders need one-click unsubscribe (the List-Unsubscribe header) and must honour requests within two days.
• Keep spam complaints low. Google asks senders to stay below 0.1% and treats 0.3% as the line where delivery suffers.

What it means for cold email

Cold email done properly already fits these rules: small daily volumes per mailbox, authenticated domains, a way out in every email. The senders it hurts are the ones blasting thousands of emails a day from one address.

How Inboxed handles it

• Every campaign email carries an unsubscribe link and a List-Unsubscribe header where the provider allows it (Microsoft Graph doesn't accept that header, so Outlook mailboxes rely on the link).
• Unsubscribes and “remove me” replies are honoured at once, across every campaign in the workspace.
• The free domain checker reads your SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, and campaigns pause automatically if bounces climb.

Try it

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