Best practices for sending emails from a third-party vendor
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Beginning in February 2024, Google, Yahoo and Apple will start enforcing new requirements on email sent to their users. We expect these changes to have a broad impact on campus communicators.
Anyone on campus who sends emails via a marketing platform such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact or Emma could be impacted by these changes.
If you’re sending exclusively from UW–Madison Microsoft 365, Eloqua or Google Groups, your emails already meet the new email authenticity requirements. We recommend you still review best practices and encourage you to use a platform that supports one-click unsubscribe if you are sending marketing or promotional emails.
What is changing?
The goal of these changes is to protect against spam and improve deliverability. In short, these changes include:
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 third-party service like Mailchimp or Constant Contact. Find out more about Microsoft 365: Email authentication (DMARC) introduction.
One-click unsubscribe is a user-friendly feature embedded directly within the email interface that lets subscribers easily opt out of mailing lists with a single click. This eliminates the user hunting for the unsubscribe link and navigating through several webpages to unsubscribe.
One-click unsubscribe empowers users by simplifying the unsubscribing process, giving them greater control over what lands in their inbox.
Marketing and promotional emails need to include clear unsubscribe links in the body of the text and support one-click unsubscribe in the message or email header (header: metadata included in every email), making it easier for users to opt out of future messaging.
UW–Madison senders must maintain a user-reported spam rate of less than 0.1%. This means out of every 1,000 emails from UW–Madison, only 1 can be marked as spam. The university could face various repercussions, from throttling to routing messages to spam folders to outright rejection of emails if we are over that threshold.
Our user-reported spam rate is calculated by collectively looking at all emails from UW–Madison.
This means all emails sent from our domain are evaluated together, and the user-reported spam rate is derived from this aggregate data. While your emails may pass email authentication measures, if other senders from our domain fail to meet those standards, it can adversely impact the reputation and deliverability of emails for our entire domain.
Thus, maintaining a low user-reported spam rate is incredibly important. Doing so 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.
If you’re sending marketing or promotional emails, make sure your email sending platform or tool supports 1-click unsubscribe.
What if you do nothing?
If your emails from these services do not meet the sending requirements, 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.
Best practices
In addition to new sending requirements, we recommend these best practices to protect the reputation of emails sent from UW–Madison.
Authentication
Follow vendor-supplied directions on how to approve an email address or domain for use with their service.
Avoid list repurposing
Refrain from repurposing contact lists. People are more likely to mark your messages as spam if they receive mail they aren’t expecting.
Consent
Verify recipients have signed up to receive your mailings. You should have explicit opt-in consent from the people on your email list.
Subdomain usage
Avoid using your primary @wisc.edu email address with external services. Instead, use a subdomain like @doit.wisc.edu with third-party services.
Reserve your official @wisc.edu address exclusively for the UW–Madison Microsoft 365 service.
Unsubscribe
Provide recipients a clear option to unsubscribe from future mailings.