Email marketing in 2024: a clean list and one-click unsubscribe

Since February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo have been far stricter with bulk email, and since June 1 Gmail requires every newsletter to offer one-click unsubscribe. For a small business that means four things: an authenticated domain, a list of people who actually asked for your emails, an unsubscribe link that works on the first try, and as few spam complaints as possible.

What changed this year

Google announced the rules in October 2023, and Yahoo followed with nearly identical requirements, also enforced from February. In short:

We covered SPF, DKIM and DMARC separately in last year's article. Here we look at the list and the messages themselves.

Does this apply if you send only a little?

Google defines a bulk sender as anyone who sends close to 5,000 messages or more to personal Gmail accounts within 24 hours. Everything sent from the same primary domain counts toward that total, and once you cross the line you stay a bulk sender. The status doesn't expire.

Even below the threshold, some rules apply to everyone: SPF or DKIM authentication and a spam rate under 0.3%. And a small business with a list of 3,000 addresses can cross the threshold in a single campaign day if invoices, order confirmations and staff email also go out from the same domain. It's simpler to follow all the rules from the start.

If you send through a newsletter platform, it usually adds the unsubscribe header for you. Authenticating your domain is still your job: the platform gives you the DNS records, but someone has to add them to your domain.

The list: only people who asked

Romania's Law 506/2004, in Article 12, bans commercial email without the recipient's prior, express consent. There's one exception: if a customer gave you their address directly when buying from you, you can email them about similar products or services, as long as every message gives them a simple, free way to say no.

In practice, a clean list looks like this:

• addresses come from your own form, with an unchecked box, or from customers who bought something;
• you don't buy lists, and you don't add business cards collected at trade fairs without asking;
• you remove addresses that bounce and people who haven't opened anything in a year;
• your first email says what they'll get and how often.

A small list of interested people brings more replies than a big list of strangers, and that's exactly what Gmail's filters pay attention to. We wrote about building a list the right way in our article on subscriber lists.

One-click unsubscribe

Gmail requires marketing messages to support one-click unsubscribe: a technical header (List-Unsubscribe) that lets people unsubscribe straight from their mail app, without visiting a page or logging in. On top of that, the message body needs a visible unsubscribe link. Senders who already had an unsubscribe link had until June 1, 2024 to switch to the one-click version. Google recommends honoring requests within 48 hours; Yahoo asks for the same, within 2 days.

It can feel odd to help people leave. Think about the alternative: someone who can't find the unsubscribe link hits "Spam," and every one of those clicks pushes you toward the 0.3% line.

Your complaint rate

Google recommends staying below 0.1% and never reaching 0.3% or higher. On a 1,000-email campaign, 0.3% is three people hitting "Spam." You can see your rate in Google Postmaster Tools once you verify your domain there.

What keeps the rate low: people recognize the "From" name, get what you promised at the pace you promised, and can find the unsubscribe link easily.