AOL today followed Yahoo’s lead in implementing a new policy change aimed at reducing fraudulent or spam email. If you use an aol.com “From” address for your email campaigns, you’ll want to take note of how this policy affects email you send using Direct Mail.
The Policy Change
AOL uses a technology called DMARC to digitally publish policies governing how their domain name can be used. The recent change requires that any email bearing an aol.com From address must originate from an AOL mail server IP address. Email providers like Gmail, Hotmail, and others who use DMARC will reject aol.com email that is not sent from AOL mail servers. This change was done in an effort to combat fraudulent email, but also impacts mailing lists and email service providers (like us). Mailing lists and email service providers like Direct Mail send email using their own mail servers, not AOL mail servers, which could cause legitimate email campaigns from aol.com addresses to be bounced or marked as spam.
However, there is a solution.
The Solution
The solution is to simply not use an “@aol.com” From address for your email campaigns. The best solution is to use an email address from a private company domain—like joe@abc-company.com. If that is not an option, you can use an email address from another free provider (like Gmail or Hotmail/Outlook.com). However, note that there is a good chance they could follow AOL and Yahoo’s lead and implement a similar policy change in the near future.
AOL’s policy change may be inconvenient in the short-term, but their goal is laudable. Hopefully, over time, this change will result in less spam and fewer fraudulent emails. As always, please contact our support team with any questions.
