You've likely heard about the safeguards and requirements that Google has put in place for the sending of bulk emails. If you haven't heard yet, here's a link to Google's blog where they explain: 'New Gmail protections for a safer, less spammy inbox. You may want to read about Yahoo's email recommendations as well. Microsoft also announced new requirements and proven practices to ensure that businesses sending emails to Outlook, Hotmail, and Live users comply with today's strengthened email authentication standards.

TLDR: Google has three requirements for anyone sending more than 5,000 messages to Gmail user addresses in one day. The 5,000 messages include all outbound emails from a given domain, and this limitation does not mean 5,000 messages sent from within Loxo. Similar requirements are also in place for sending to Yahoo and Microsoft users. The three requirements are listed below, along with helpful proven practices and FAQs.

DMARC is a public record that speaks to deliverability and indicates where to send information. Not having a DMARC Policy set up can be a flag that a sender doesn’t care about the outcome of a bulk send of emails. Conversely, if you do have a DMARC Policy set up, it shows that you are interested in being a responsible sender, which helps to avoid being flagged as spam. You can add DMARC to your DNS settings from within your domain host.

DNS means "Domain Name Service," and it's basically a fancy way of organizing the numbers and addresses across IP addresses. For example, when you are sending an email from an IP address that doesn’t connect with a website or an organization, it is more likely to be identified as spam. The goal is that you want the IP address and the domain to point to each other. This works similarly to the way that a utility bill should match the name and the address of the resident or owner of that house - if utility bills for the wrong person started arriving at the wrong house, that would indicate something might be wrong. DNS helps to address that in the world of digital sending.

This MXToolbox article outlines the meaning and value of adding DMARC to your domain.
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Nobody likes an inbox full of emails pushing unwanted products or services, and that is exactly the driving factor behind these requirements. A key part of this change is reducing unwanted email, so senders who distribute emails in bulk need to provide a method for recipients to unsubscribe.

Loxo already has easy-to-use Unsubscribe Links that you can include in your emails. Click the link to learn how to add unsubscribe links to your messaging in Loxo.

Your "Reported Spam Threshold" is the number of people who report your emails as spam or junk. Emails can be filtered automatically and sent to spam or junk folders by recipient servers, and emails can also be manually tagged as spam directly by the recipients. The new requirements are targeting senders who have a high rate of spam.

Ideally, your spam rate should be under 0.10% - which means that only 1 out of 1,000 recipients would consider your emails to be spam. These changes will impact senders who reach a level of 0.30% spam rate - when 3 out of 1,000 people would consider your emails to be spam.

The proven practices that lead to higher email deliverability also help to avoid being reported as spam. Loxo has a list of proven practices that address email deliverability and how to avoid being flagged as spam, which will become even more important now.

You can also review Gmail's Help Center for more information on their Sending Guidelines.

The current understanding is that major email service providers will stop delivering emails from flagged senders, or your emails will get sent directly to spam.

It is important to take care of your domain health and follow today's proven practices - specifically the responsible email etiquette as described above - because once the algorithm labels an address as spam, it can be a challenge to change. It is hard to get on the phone to make a case with Google or Microsoft, for example, so one of the best paths to repair your domain's reputation would be to ask your email recipients to mark your messages as Not Spam. Whether you ask friends and family to participate in this exercise or can accomplish it in some other way, direct feedback from people receiving your email who manually mark your email as ‘not spam’ is the best way to change the categorization of your messages.

There are different rules for personal Gmail accounts than for Google Workspace accounts. These new regulations apply to personal Gmail accounts. At this time, Google Workspace addresses will be omitted from this requirement. So in the recruiting world, this places the impact largely on the candidate outreach side and may not impact your business development efforts as much.

If you are going to be sending large email blasts (think about newsletters, outbound lead-gen, or business development), send those messages from a separate domain so your main domain is not impacted. If you have a candidate in the final rounds of interviews, you wouldn't want that interview invitation email to go to spam because of a separate independent marketing email blast.

Proven practices show that you should avoid more than a 10% increase in emails sent day to day. If you typically send 100 emails per day and then send a quarterly newsletter to 1,000 people, your email deliverability will be impacted after the newsletter is sent due to the outgoing traffic spike for your domain. Consider sending larger messages in smaller batches, keeping in mind that you want to keep your daily total sends within a 10% change.

Your partner platforms do not contribute to the health of your domain. As a Loxo customer, this is helpful to know because your domain health will not be impacted by the activities of other Loxo users. The onus for responsible domain health is up to each organization and can be managed by following the proven practices outlined above.

You can also check out Gmail's Help Center for more insight into their Sending Guidelines.