Last updated January 26, 2024
What is changing?
The goal of these changes is to protect against spam and improve deliverability. In short, these changes include:
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Stricter email authentication standards
Authenticating your outbound email helps the receiving mailbox provider (Google, Yahoo or Apple) know that a message actually came from your organization, or was sent on your behalf through a 3rd-party service like Mailchimp or Constant Contact. Find out more about email authenticity (DMARC).
Adding a 1-click unsubscribe function
Marketing and promotional emails will need to include clear unsubscribe links in the body of the text and support one-click unsubscribe in the message header, making it easier for users to opt out of future messaging.
Maintaining a low user-reported spam rate
UW–Madison senders need to maintain a user-reported spam rate of less than 0.3%. This means out of every 1,000 emails from UW–Madison, only 3 can be marked as spam. Maintaining this is incredibly important and helps ensure we’re protecting the reputation of email from UW–Madison.
What should you do?
We are here to help you determine whether your emails are compliant with the new requirements. If you think you may be impacted (or if you aren’t sure), contact us for an email authenticity consultation.
What if you do nothing?
If your emails from these services do not meet the new sending requirements, any of the following could occur.
Delays in delivery
Messages could experience delivery delays.
Spam
Your messages could be sent to the recipient’s spam folder.
Rejected messages
Messages could be rejected as undeliverable.
5 best practices to follow when sending emails
In addition to adhering to the new sending requirements, we recommend following these best practices when sending emails. The goal is to work together to protect the reputation of emails sent from UW–Madison.
- Do not use an email address in the @wisc.edu domain (e.g. bucky.badger@wisc.edu) with services other than UW–Madison Microsoft 365. Instead, we recommend you use an email address in a subdomain (e.g. bucky@doit.wisc.edu) with 3rd party services.
- Follow vendor-supplied directions on how to approve an email address or domain for use with their service.
- Make sure recipients have signed up to receive your mailings. You should have explicit opt-in consent from the people on your email list.
- Provide recipients the option to unsubscribe from future mailings.
- Refrain from repurposing contact lists. People are more likely to mark your messages as spam if they receive mail they aren’t expecting.
Resources & documentation
Want to learn more about these changes? Check out the resources below.
3rd party documentation
KnowledgeBase documents
The KnowledgeBase articles linked below outline steps to set up custom domain authentication for common 3rd party services. Doing so allows the 3rd party vendors to send DMARC-compliant emails from email addresses in your organization’s subdomain (e.g. @doit.wisc.edu).