Act-On Software has partnered with customers for 15 years, guiding them through healthy email deliverability practices. As mailbox providers like Google and Yahoo tighten requirements in 2024, Act-On is again ahead of the curve to help marketers achieve email deliverability success.

New 2024 email requirements are in effect, limiting marketers who don’t follow best practices from hitting inboxes, but Act-On’s deliverability services and proprietary email servers have ensured customers comply with email rules for more than a decade. These requirements from Google, Yahoo, and other mailbox providers are designed to enhance email security, improve user experience, and ensure emails reaching inboxes are relevant and safe. To avoid being penalized by these major service providers and instead reach target audience inboxes, marketers must take several important steps.

“These are email deliverability practices that Act-On has championed since long before they were required,” said Brian Willis, Act-On Manager of Deliverability Services. “We coach marketers to optimize email strategy and ensure that content is ready to avoid spam placement and blocklists.”
The first major change of 2024 is stricter authentication requirements. These protocols combat phishing and spoofing attempts. Email senders are now required to implement the latest authentication standards to be seen as trusted recipients. These standards include:

• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance)
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
• SPF (Sender Policy Framework)

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Act-On’s marketing automation (MA) solution already implements a side-by-side email checklist for marketers to track compliance of many email standards.

Providers are also placing a stronger emphasis on user engagement metrics to determine the relevance and quality of emails. Senders with consistently low engagement rates may find their emails filtered out of the primary inbox. To maintain a positive sender reputation, businesses should focus on delivering content that resonates with audiences and encourages user interaction.

Next, mobile optimization is critical. With most email opens happening on mobile devices, mailbox providers urge senders to optimize emails for mobile viewing. Readers are more likely to ignore poorly formatted emails or report them as spam.

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To remain in good standing with providers like Google and Yahoo, email senders should ensure their unsubscribe mechanisms are clear, easily accessible, and promptly honored. Act-On has always enabled unsubscribe mechanisms to occur immediately upon request, upholding sender reputation.

Bulk email senders,  who send 5,000 or more messages to Yahoo or Google domains per day, including marketers who use marketing automation solutions, must follow new sender guidelines to stay below a reported spam threshold of 0.3%. Act-On Software has helped customers implement these best practices for years and continues to provide the gold standard for marketing automation.

Unlike many marketing automation and email providers, Act-On runs its own email servers. Because Act-On manages all aspects of its email environment, the Act-On deliverability team has immediate access to any email data needed to assist senders. This is one key way Act-On helps marketers manage their own high deliverability rates.

Act-On Deliverability Services also works directly with customers to help them implement email marketing best practices, like those listed above, maintain a clean, well-managed database, and focus on high-quality content to ensure high deliverability.

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