This month, Google announced that it would soon implement new requirements for “bulk senders” – defined as senders who send more than 5,000 messages to Gmail addresses in one day – that will likely impact most companies that send marketing emails.

By February 2024, Gmail will start to require that bulk senders:

Authenticate their email: Bulk senders will have “to strongly authenticate their emails following well-established best practices” outlined by Google.
Enable easy un-subscription: Bulk senders will have to give Gmail recipients the ability to unsubscribe from commercial email in one click, and they will be required process unsubscribe requests within two days.
Ensure they’re sending wanted email: Google will enforce a clear spam rate threshold that senders must stay under to ensure Gmail recipients aren’t bombarded with unwanted messages.

Google advises companies “to follow the guidelines in this article as soon as possible. Meeting the sender requirements before the deadline may improve your email delivery. If you don’t meet the requirements described in this article, your email might not be delivered as expected, or might be marked as spam.”

Notably, these are not legal requirements, but given that Gmail remains the most popular email platform with over 1.8 billion users worldwide, these requirements will likely impact most advertisers.

New Gmail Marketing Requirements Will Impact Most Advertisers