If you use a yahoo.com “From” address for your email campaigns, you may have noticed that there is now a greater chance of your email bouncing or being marked as spam. This is due to a recent policy change by Yahoo on how email sent from yahoo.com addresses should be handled. This blog post explains, in brief, the policy change and what you can do about it. Remember, this only affects you if you are using a yahoo.com From address on your email campaigns.
The Policy Change
Yahoo uses a technology called DMARC to digitally publish policies governing how other mail servers should interpret email sent from yahoo.com. The recent change requires that any email bearing a yahoo.com From address must originate from a Yahoo mail server IP address. Email providers like Gmail, Hotmail, and others who use DMARC will reject yahoo.com email not from Yahoo mail servers. This change was done in an effort to combat fraudulent email, but has not been without its share of controversy. The controversy stems from the fact that this policy change breaks most mailing lists and can cause some trouble for email service providers (like us). Mailing lists and email service providers like Direct Mail send email using their own mail servers, not Yahoo mail servers, which could cause legitimate email campaigns from yahoo.com addresses to be bounced or marked as spam.
However, there is a solution.
The Solution
The solution is to simply not use a “@yahoo.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 Yahoo’s lead and implement a similar policy change in the near future.
Yahoo’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.
