In October, Gmail and Yahoo! announced a series of changes to how bulk email will be sent, received, and enforced. Amongst these changes was the need to publish a DMARC record. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC were considered best practices up to this time but with this announcement have pivoted to enforceable requirements.
Twilio SendGrid and Valimail, the leading provider of email authentication and anti-phishing solutions, have long partnered to take the complexity out of DMARC record creation. Twilio and Valimail will continue to partner in order to provide senders of all sizes the tools and insights to ensure their mail is compliant with today’s new sending requirements.
By partnering, Valimail and Twilio are enabling Twilio Sendgrid customers to rapidly create and/or audit existing DMARC policies, providing a set of robust tools and reporting to ensure compliance with a few of Gmail and Yahoo’s new requirements.
"As we at Valimail continue this important partnership with Twilio, we are not just forging a new path in email security and authentication, but also reshaping how businesses approach email marketing in a rapidly evolving digital landscape,” said Seth Blank, CTO, Valimail. “Our role as the selected DMARC vendor for Twilio SendGrid underlines our commitment to excellence and innovation and support of the new requirements from Google and Yahoo."
Valimail’s recently introduced Align provides senders with an easy way to ensure their email authentication complies with evolving delivery standards set by major providers including Google and Yahoo. Ultimately, Align reduces the time spent on aligning SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for the easiest path to compliance.
Introduced in 2012, Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance, more commonly referred to as DMARC, was designed to give senders the ability to protect their domain from unauthorized use i.e. spoofing/phishing. In its simplest form, DMARC is a DNS-based policy that builds on the SPF and DKIM standards. The policy grants the sender the ability to tell a receiving mailbox provider how to treat mail they receive that fails SPF or DKIM checks. DMARC has proven highly effective at preventing domain abuse and securing a brand’s presence in the inbox.
“The new email requirements are an opportunity for businesses to better secure their brands, sending domains and improve their deliverability,” said Abhi Sharma, Senior Vice President of Product at Twilio. “Trust is the most valuable currency senders have with customers and this partnership with Valimail can help those senders navigate the new requirements with ease, trust, and improved deliverability.”
As the much anticipated and discussed new sender requirements from Google and Yahoo go live, senders have begun to assess the initial impact of what has been widely regarded as one of the most significant developments in email in recent years. Gmail, Yahoo!, and other mailbox providers that are also requiring DMARC are reorienting the entire ecosystem around security to create a cleaner and better-insulated inbox.
As of February 1st, bulk senders who haven’t met sender requirements may have started to receive temporary errors “on a small percentage of their non-compliant email traffic,” but rejections of non-compliant traffic won’t begin in earnest until April.
This 60-day window between temporary errors and rejections provides senders with a much-needed opportunity to review their current compliance and/or take the necessary steps toward ensuring it.
Streamlined Compliance Reporting: Rapid assessment of your adherence status across all sending services to ensure your emails don’t end up being blocked.
Automated Configuration: Utilize guided workflows to authorize all your senders with a single click, eliminating the need for manual decoding of DMARC reports, IP address lookups, or DNS change management.
Intelligent Task List: Step-by-step instructions to help you configure or troubleshoot alignment issues for lightning-fast compliance.
With the combination of SendGrid tools to support SPF and DKIM along with Valimail Align for the visualization of reporting data that is easily consumable and actionable, you can ensure compliance with Google and Yahoo’s new sender requirements. You can also reach out to the Twilio Professional Services team to inquire about our email service offerings.
