I'm Bev Feldman person who sent out the email about this so if we've not met before welcome I mean businesses your personal tech Barry and I do I'm not a ConvertKit employee but I do do ConvertKit consulting and email automation strategy. And while we give everyone a minute to pop in if you want to share in the chat if you feel so inclined, you know where you're calling in from.
Yeah, sure to go and say say hi and say we're where you're calling in from. I am calling from a are calling. I am hosting from a very rainy Boston area like it is just downpour this whole day. And then from Colorado. Where is my chat screen by the way? There it is. All right. Oh, and I'm going to start to record this. I have my otter companion here taking notes as well, but I will also make sure we've got this recorded recording in progress. Okay. So welcome. I'm gonna do I've got an introduce two people. We actually have two people from ConvertKit. Today we have Melissa Lambert and Melissa do I don't know when like, I don't know if you will people see your face in a moment. And where did I put that little intro? Sorry. Um, so Melissa is the sorry, Melissa Lambert is a deliverability lead at ConvertKit and she's been with ConvertKit for three years. She's also host of the podcast deliverability define which is you can tell all that deliverability and Melissa loves helping customers get their emails to the inbox and understand deliverability ins and outs. We also have Chris who is an engineer at ConvertKit, who also helps out with deliverability. So Melissa will be presenting and they're both here to help answer your questions. So I will turn it over to Melissa. And I see people are muted at rate continue to stay muted if you have any questions pop them into the chat and we'll keep an eye on monitor. It.
Sounds good. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen with you all so I can present. All right, so we're gonna hop into it. As you all know and you're all here. For this reason, Gmail and Yahoo are the hot topic today. I've started saying Yahoo goal instead because it makes it a lot easier to talk about it instead of saying Gmail and Yahoo all the time. So if you hear me say that that's my new term so basically, we found out in October that these major new requirements were being announced by Gmail and Yahoo, and essentially, it kind of disrupted the deliverability landscape and sort of the email marketing landscape and essentially, these requirements have been things in email for a really long time. They've been considered best practices, and they've been pushed by a lot of mailbox providers for years. But the way that the ecosystem kind of works, there was people who followed these practices. And there was a lot of people a very large portion of people who do not and so these security systems, which we'll talk about in a second, they haven't been working very well because only a small group of people have like bought into this. And that's kind of where this push from Gmail and Yahoo was coming from. So we've seen a really large rise in spoofing on domains and fishing in general, kind of ever since COVID. We saw a pretty large increase in spam and fish and I'm sure a lot of you have seen it in your own inboxes.
But that's kind of where this whole push is coming from. Like let's help senders who are really good senders continue to get rewarded for doing the right things and let's try to keep spam and fish out of people's inboxes. These requirements will affect any sender that sends bulk email. I know there's been a lot of discussion around like a threshold. For example, there was one that I think Gmail put out that was like 5000 messages a day or something. But recently, Yahoo has announced that they don't have a particular threat threshold, they're just going to be looking at bulk email in general. So this number will be sort of variable. So when people ask me like, you know, is there a threshold of when I should start looking at when to be compliant? My response right now is even if you're not sending like a really large volume of mail, you should still look into doing this because it's best practices and hopefully will help you be compliant when and if your list grows very quickly or something like that. These will go and these requirements will go into effect in February. mid February, we don't have an exact date. And as a lot of you can probably imagine Gmail and Yahoo often keep a lot of information really close to the chest. They try to give us what they can, but there are a lot of times where ESPs will ask questions and we get a very general answer. So just keep that in mind. Like we're doing our best at ConvertKit to try and find all the answers but there's a lot of stuff we probably won't know until these requirements are actually in effect. Okay, so authentication is what this whole requirement change is all about. Authentication, like I mentioned, has always been recommended by mailbox providers, but we're seeing the responsibility kind of get pushed onto senders now, instead of just all of the mailbox providers taking responsibility for it. Okay, so I kind of want to go over like why they're requiring this in a way that's a little bit easier to understand. This email right here was actually a abuse email that was sent to ConvertKit. i That's part of my job is making sure that the senders that ConvertKit are following best practices that we don't have spammers. On our platform, that we have good senders, and this was actually an email that we received that is from a very popular creator at our that's a customer of ours, Tim Ferriss. As you can imagine Tim Ferriss did not send this email from his account and it was actually a spammer who is using his domain to send phishing and spamming emails. So this is what it looks like when someone is sending spam and they are also using a domain that doesn't belong to them and sort of the main reason behind some of these requirements as to keep this kind of thing from happening. So it's to prevent smooth spoofing and make it a lot easier to catch those spammers who are trying to do that ConvertKit is a member of Mogh, which is a malware anti abuse platform. It's a really great organization that does a lot for the email world. You have to be invited to go to this conference that happens a couple of times a year. And as you can imagine, a lot of people attended the one in October because this news was just announced. We had some representatives from Gmail and Yahoo, who were actually at the conference and were able to give us some like information right away. Right after these requirements were announced. So that was pretty cool. Gmail said more than 99% of unauthenticated mail is that sent is abuse. So again, just to reiterate, this is why these requirements are so important because we are trying to be good stewards of email and help the overall Eagles help the overall ecosystem. Yahoo also said that it's time for senders and receivers to share the responsibility like I mentioned earlier, so kind of just like a tidbit from them in the conference that we attended. Okay, so let's get into like some of the tough stuff. So, the requirements. Here, I listed all of them out. This is kind of the checkmarks or what ConvertKit will be doing. And the little cautions, symbols are what senders responsibility kind of falls into so the first one is passing SPF and DKIM when you send from ConvertKit and I'll have an example of this in the next slide. When you send through ConvertKit we automatically sign SPF and DKIM for you. So that is something that you don't have to worry about. If you have a domain address and it's set up with MX records correctly, you can descend from ConvertKit and we will sign SPF and DKIM for you so you don't have to worry about that. The next requirement is setting up demark for your sending domain. We'll get into this in a second. demark is that authentication piece of email that really helps like keep your domain safe, keeps it from being spoofed. The next requirement is the domain in the senders from header must be aligned with either SPF or DKIM. We'll get to that again in a second. The next slide, ensure that sending domains or IPS have valid forward and reverse DNS records. This is something you all do not have to worry about. If you're a ConvertKit customer, we're doing this for you. If you're at another ESP, maybe you're not a ConvertKit customer, then it's likely your ESP is already doing this for you as well. The next one is keeping spam rates reported on Google postmaster tools. Below point 3% And as of today, we actually found out that it's possible that Gmail may even want this to be below point 1%. So it's really important to set up Google postmaster tools. And we will have a list of like help documents at the end of this call and I'll make sure that Bev shares all of those with you all. So don't feel like you have to have this all written down or memorized right now. The next one is one click unsubscribe. ConvertKit we'll deal with that. We'll make sure that we're compliant. And that actually, to that timeline got pushed out to June. So we're going to make sure that that's all taken care of for you all. And then the final thing is no more sending from gmail.com addresses. So this just means if you have a free email address, for example, mine's Melissa lambert@gmail.com. I can no longer send from that address. I would have to purchase a domain address in order to send through ConvertKit or send bulk bulk mail in general.
Okay, so here's what's really changing. You can see on the left, this is an email header. I can send some instructions to Bev that she can send to you all on how to look at your email headers. But essentially, this is a this is an email on the left here that's coming from a customer at ConvertKit. They have a verified sending domain setup. So you can see that their from address is their own domain. And you can see down here their SPF and their decam are passing and DKM is passing with the domain that is sending in the from address field up here. And then the last thing is that demark is also passing to put it in very basic terms without being too in the weeds. The two things that are the most important that I can say right now that you should do as a bulk sender is set up a verified sending domain in ConvertKit. And the second thing is to set up demark on your domain. If you do those two things, you're doing really well and you're ahead of the game. Setting up Google postmaster tools is great. But if you could do anything right now, I would say set up the VSD verified sending domain in your ConvertKit account. And the second thing is setting up demark. If you look at the message header on the right, you can see that SPF and DKIM are still passing so that was the piece I said earlier that ConvertKit signs SPF and Deacon for you. But you can see that the D Kim area is passing with a ConvertKit domain instead of the sender's domain, which is Justin Walsh. So he would need to set up a verified sending domain in his ConvertKit account in order to be compliant. And it also looks like he doesn't have demark setup so he would need to set that up as well to be kind of in like the green zone. Okay, so CK customers set up a VSD. Create a demark record for your domain. When you get to that step and you feel comfortable. Go ahead and set up Google postmaster tool so you can start monitoring your complaints. And if you're using a Gmail address to send email, go ahead and purchase the domain address now and set up a mailbox for that so that you're able to send with a domain address instead of a free address. This is what the verified sending domains section in ConvertKit currently looks like without going into too much. We are currently working on a third party service that will help all of our customers set up a demark record and their VSD more easily. I can't share too much information yet because we're still in the process of getting that integrated into ConvertKit. But we're looking for that to be ready for use by hopefully the beginning of the new year. So look out for that. And as I mentioned, we're doing a lot on our end to try and make this as easy as possible for Senators. We know it's kind of overwhelming and it's a lot of information. But our team is here to help navigate through all of this and we're staying on top of all of the industry news to make sure that if there's any changes or anything that ConvertKit can do to make this easier, we will do that. Another thing, this is going to be like kind of best practice and requirements moving forward. Comcast was there at the conference we went to and they even mentioned that even though they haven't officially given a statement about what their changes will be. They're going to also move towards this direction of the requirements. So it's going to look like most major mailbox providers will require these types of things moving forward. So the third party application that I mentioned that will have to help with this process will hopefully be in place by the beginning of January. And then we'll continue to put out podcasts knowledgebase articles, we're going to host a webinar in January, which will be like through ConvertKit and we will send out information for anyone to join that as well. And hopefully you know if there's any updates from Gmail or Yahoo, we'll include those in January. January's webinar. So, if you don't comply and this isn't meant to be scary but if you don't comply, you can see your deliverability engagement, drop. Gmail and Yahoo are going to bounce messages that don't comply with these requirements. So you can see a drop in your open rate. You can see an increase in your bounce rate and we will know because those bounce codes will be very specific to whatever issue is going on. So we'll be able to help you figure out Excuse me, what is happening and hopefully be able to fix that for you really, really easily. So that's the good news. We'll know what's going on. But that's all to say about setting these requirements up now is really important before February. And that's what I have so far. So I wanted to kind of keep it high or ish level. I know that was a lot of information. But if people have questions or if you want to talk about concerns or comments like anything you have I would love to hear from you all. Yeah,
and feel free. I'm gonna ask Melissa some questions that were submitted before. If it's easier for you to unmute yourself if you want to do like Oh, hang on raise emoji otherwise, you can pop the questions in the chat. So one question that I've had is or that I that I've heard kind of floating around, which I don't think has been explicitly explained is, you know, if you go from having either like, you basically have to build up your sender reputation for your email address, especially if you didn't have a verified sender domain. So from my understanding is that you don't want to just be like, Okay, I've done this now I'm gonna go and send an email to my entire list because that could end up having things in spam. So like, can you share with the group a little bit more about how to kind of approach that and start at you know, how to start with the more engaged folks and kind of build your way up as you build your reputation?
Yeah, that's a great question. So to keep it as simple as possible, if you are not sending with a verified sending domain, it means that you are using your domain that convert hits domain is more heavily weighted in the background of the message. If you're sending with a verified sending domain, it means that your own domain is being used in multiple places in the background of the message. Convert kids domain is not being used. So that means Gmail and Yahoo are looking at your domain. They're waiting it more heavily when you use a verified sending domain. So my best piece of advice right now is if you don't have one setup, the first thing you could do is run a reengagement, or like list cleaning on your list, I would only send like one or two emails maybe to like your coldest group of subscribers in your account. And I know it's really hard to like part with subscribers, but engagement and engagement metrics are going to be more important than ever right now. So I highly recommend unsubscribing those people or deleting them from your list. And then once you do that, identify who your most engaged subscribers are like, if you're on a Pro Plan at ConvertKit, you should have access to subscriber scoring so you'd be able to see I have five star subscribers and four star subscribers, I would recommend sending to those people first. And if you don't have access to that information, then I would just identify like any segments or tags that you have that you send to who you know the engagement metrics are really good and send to those groups first. Once you've added your verified sending domain, the best piece of advice for most deliverability changes. Any change a sender makes can affect your deliverability. But the best thing you can do is send to those really engaged subscribers. And then slowly add on the rest of your list if you're concerned. If you have a smaller list, it may not be as impactful, but it's just a good practice to get into either way. So hopefully that kind of helps.
Yeah, and by engagement, just in case people don't understand we're talking about like open rates which we have to take with a grain of salt but open rates click through rates if you know people are replying to your emails, you can kind of unfortunately manually tag those folks. But that's what we mean by engagement. So I see that Chris explained what demark is, but um, I don't know. Do you want to just explain it out loud a little bit. Chris. Yeah. Or or Melissa?
Yeah. demark. demark is a tool that is essentially security for your domain. And there's three levels of demark the lowest level is when you try to figure out the best way to explain this without getting too in the weeds. There's the three levels. So it goes from like the lowest level of security to the highest level of security. The lowest level is p equals none. That essentially just in general means if your message is not passing authentication properly, do nothing to the message let it go through. If you move to the next level of demark, which is P equals quarantine, it means if your message does not pass authentication, send that message to spam. And the reason for that is that you're trying to protect your domain reputation. So if I'm a spammer, and I decide to use your domain in my Walmart spam email, that email won't end up in the inbox of all of the people that I send that email to, it's going to end up in spam, which is what you want. So you don't want your emails ending up in spam. But if someone uses your domain in their spamming email, you do want their emails to end up in spam. So that's kind of essentially where demark comes from. The strictest level of demark is p equals reject. And that means if an email is sent from my domain, and it does not pass authentication, reject the email and bounce it. This is for like a good example of this would be if someone was able to spoof a Macy's domain, it could have significant impacts on their domain reputation, but also so many people who received that email. So instead of getting letting that email out, the email would bounce. And so we don't want that to happen to your emails. But we do want that to happen to anyone who's sending phishing or spam. Hopefully that helps clarify a little bit. It's a very complicated topic. And if you don't understand it right away, that's okay. I wouldn't have a job if you all probably understood it. So don't worry about that. I am here to help with any questions you have. The the main takeaway though is if you make a change to demark like if you get anything from this presentation, if you make a change to demark. Please make sure you have your verified ascending domain set up in ConvertKit. First, that's the order so verified sending domain first in ConvertKit. Then set up your demark record and that's to help navigate any issues with delivery.
Yeah, and I can share I worked with a client who on a different platform and because of their hosts, their demark had already been set up and it was very strict and so this clients emails were just going straight to spit like we had noticed a huge drop in their open rate from like 20 to 30% range down to less than 10%. So I think that's also a good indication that something's not working, if you is not set up correctly. If your open rates are usually in a general range and you see a significant drop off. Like it's dropped a lot and you that would be a good indication that something might be set up either incorrectly or too strictly.
It's a scary problem to have, but it's my favorite problem for people to have because it's literally the easiest fix like it takes only a couple of steps and all of a sudden you see your open rates go from 5% back up to where they were. If you have a deliverability problem, oftentimes that can be reputation and that takes a lot more work to fix. So it seems scary, but don't be intimidated by demark. If you follow those steps in order, you'll be fine.
So I'm gonna keep going I'm gonna go through the chat. I'll come to some of my questions later. So Beth asked, and I think this goes back to you know, building up that reputation when you're in like sending out emails to certain segments as you make these changes. And Beth asks, How do automated emails play into that? Do we need to pause our welcome sequences, etc?
That's a good question. Um, I would say no, you don't need to pause. You're welcome sequences I'm trying to find was gonna reread the question again. Oh, yeah, here we go. Um, yeah, I don't think so. In fact, welcome sequences can be some of the most helpful engagement emails because those people who are getting a welcome sequence are usually new to your list. So typically, I would say the new people on your list are the most engaged because they're just initially becoming familiar with your content. They're probably opening more of your emails. So I wouldn't pause those. The biggest like, piece of all of the reputation stuff would be cold subscribers. In general, cold subscribers can be detrimental to your sender reputation. This doesn't just have to do with all of these new requirements and changes. Gmail has a general rule of thumb, I believe it's 180 days. If you send to a lot of cold subscribers, and you don't have great engagement with the rest of your list, if you send to them for about 180 days, that's when we start to see Gmail send more emails to the spam folder, because they're noticing that there's a lot of people on your list who aren't engaging. And so your emails don't look wanted in the eyes of Gmail. So I would say the more important piece of all of that isn't necessarily like the automated emails portion or a funnel that you have set up. It's who on your list has been there for six months and has never opened an email. Those are the people I want you to focus on. And those are the ones that can be like pulling down your sender reputation. And when you add that verified sending domain it your domain will just be weighted even more heavily. So those like negative impacts or excuse me, those negative signals could just affect you a bit more harshly.
Like to add ConvertKit actually added in the spring a way to set up so it's more automated to look for people who have not been opening your emails. So and I think a lot of other email marketing software's allow you to automate that as well. Yeah,
we have an automation that you can actually copy and you can, you know, customize it to whatever works for you. But it's a really great way to like if it's something you don't want to like have to manually do or think about. You could go in and create that automation to say if anyone hasn't clicked in six months, run them through and if they don't click to stay on my list. Remove them. So it is really helpful.
And then Coco asked, Can you please clarify a smaller list? Yeah,
so I would say obviously, that's a that's a variable term, depending on where you're at in in your email marketing journey, but I would say when I work with migration customers, we don't, we don't technically offer a super customized warmup plan for them unless they're sending to 50,000 subscribers or more. And that's just a, that's a ballpark like deliverability expert number that we've just noticed can have a really large impact. So I would say if you have a list of 50,000 or less, running your list through a reengagement I like your cold subscribers through reengagement and then sending to your whole list is probably fine. You don't need to send in tons of small batches and like ramp up over time. Like I think you'd be good just to like clean out the cold subscribers. Send your whole list. If you have a list of 50,000 or more and you need help, kind of looking at your engagement metrics and making a decision on if you need to, like do a different strategy. Like I'm happy to help with that. But if your list is left less than 50,000 you're probably good just to like clean out your old subscribers and send everybody else
who gave asked when this relates to some questions I had as well. So where do you set up your demark? Once you have your email verified, and I think it kind of an expansion of that because I think there's some confusion over it. So let's say for example, you have your website hosted through Squarespace and you have a Google workplace email where in that case, for example, would you set up demark so
this is we're running into this with a lot of people right now because a lot of people haven't had to look up their DNS records and so I totally understand where this is coming from but a really great way to look up who hosts your and this isn't 100% but to look up your DNS records is a website called MX toolbox and I think Chris can probably link to that. If you type in your domain and look up the the MX records there'll be a little section down at the bottom that will say who is reporting the DNS. And normally you can see like it'll be Cloudflare or it'll be GoDaddy or it'll be you know, Google workspace or it will show you who is hosting typically it's wherever you purchased your domain from. But there are kind of some nuances to that. I know that like, for example, if you purchase a domain through like click funnels, they use a third party service for that. And so your domain is hosted by a different company. It's not click funnels, if that makes sense. So the best way I've seen is to go either where you've purchased your domain typically or you can look up on that MX record toolbox website and it can help you kind of pinpoint where to go.
What even for also for people like me who do self hosted WordPress, like I personally made the purchase my domain from GoDaddy, but it's actually hosted somewhere else, right? And I in that case, if I'm understanding correctly, I set up my demark through my host company and not where I purchased my domain. Yeah,
so it's my host as well. Yeah. So it's wherever your DNS records are posted, which is there's a lot of different like scenarios that can happen for that. So if you don't remember, you might have to do a little digging to figure that out. And if you need help identifying it to like, you can reach out to me or Alyssa we can help you figure that out.
Thanks. And then kind of along this question about DMARC Nikki asked can you have DMARC set up and not know
Yes, happens all the time. And that's that's what was happening a lot. Like all see a customer move their DNS like their domain host. So they'll know exactly what you're kind of saying above. They'll move like they bought it on GoDaddy, but they want it they're hosting it somewhere else. And I think during that transition, people will accidentally add a demark record. So what happens is, someone will reach out panicking and say my open rates are usually 40%. And now they're 5%. What's going on, I have a deliverability problem. And I go in and I look at their messages. And I can tell that they have a really strict demark record and all of their messages are bouncing. So to fix that in ConvertKit you go in and you add that verified sending domain and once you do that, everything passes and all the messages go back to the inbox. So in that particular situation, that's the fix but it happens all the time. Chris can also link to another resource called demotion and this is what I use a lot. You can go in put your domain address in the search bar, and it will let you know if you have a demark record set up or not.
Follow up question with the demark stuff because I've seen some email marketing software say you should set this up through a subdomain.
So and so in ConvertKit at this time, you cannot set up a verified sending domain with a subdomain you have to set it up with your parent domain. There's again a lot of nuance to all of this some ESPs do it differently but with ConvertKit you have to use that parent domain and you have to set up demark with your parent domain. A lot of questions we get a lot of questions about like well, if I set up a verified sending domain and I have to add these records to my DNS settings, can I break my website and the answer is technically no. If you set it up correctly, it's two CNAME records that you're going to add to your DNS settings. And those CNAME records just point to ConvertKit. They don't affect other parts of wherever you're sending from with your domain or where your domains hosted. So if that helps kind of like make people feel a little bit better about adding those records, it shouldn't do anything as long as you set up those two CNAME records. They only point to ConvertKit.
And if you're wondering what is a CNAME record, is you kind of follow these steps. It'll explain a little bit more like you don't have to know what a CNAME record is. It'll just say like, the directions will tell you to do this,
right? Yes, yeah, don't panic. It's all in like when you set up a verified sending domain. It will give you exactly what you need to copy and paste and usually, whoever your domain wherever your DNS settings are hosted. They usually have a support team to that can help you add those CNAME records if you're uncomfortable doing it on your own. Yeah.
Again, continuing on with this DMARC the DMARC records. So once you set that up, you start you can have it send you reports. Yes, so one of my clients was saying that they're getting like a ton of reports. So first of all, you might if you are having it sent to you, you might want to have a set it up so it's getting filtered somewhere else in your inbox or have a separate email account, which I think is what Melissa you And Alissa mentioned, as an idea to have a set. So you're not getting flooded with emails in your main inbox about these records. But continuing on this, like, is there anything people should be looking out for in these records? Or is it something you can kind of just ignore until you notice something's going wrong?
They they can be extremely overwhelming. The demark reports can be very overwhelming. I'm going to paste in the chat right now. Like what ConvertKit demark record looks like. So that you can get an understanding. So if you look here our demark record for convertkit.com is set to p equals none. So we have the lowest level of security on our domain. If you look at this portion here that says Are you a equals mail to this is the this is the email address that that the demark reports will go to they can be Yes, again, very overwhelming. And if it stresses you out to look at those, I highly recommend adding a different email address than like your domain address or your primary inbox or whatever. They're really hard to read. And there's actually a lot of demark report reader applications out there. I think a lot of them are free. Off the top of my head. I don't have a great recommendation but I could find one if any of you are interested in that. But that is where all the demark reports will go to so that's the mail two, you're going to be asked to add an email address there when you add your demark record and you'll want to just make sure that you that you liked the idea of seeing those demark reports and if you don't, then I would recommend sending them to a different address and looking into getting some kind of demark report reader application.
And then I'm going through the questions again. So it says someone asked did you say can Burkett can set up the demark for us? I mean, that's not they can do
so right this very second. We can't set up demark for you but we are working on that third party tool that will be integrated into ConvertKit into your account settings. I don't have any like I can't really share any images or what it's going to look like or anything like that yet. We're still in the process of getting that up and running but by the beginning of January basically what it's gonna look like is you'll have the option to log into your DNS host through the ConvertKit like Account Settings page. And from there, you will be able to easily add your demark record so you won't have to go to like a different tab or pull up a different website or whatever. So it will be a little bit easier to add that information in and but we can't set it up for you because we don't have access to your host settings.
Yeah, and I think you mentioned this a little bit earlier, Melissa, hard for me to follow what you're saying and read the questions at the same time. So but a lot your host if you have like a self hosted website usually your host can help you otherwise you know Squarespace should be able to help you wherever your website lives, they should be able to help you with this. So gave asked what's the difference between the custom domain and the verified sender domain in ConvertKit. So
the custom domain is different, completely different type of record. You can add multiple custom domains into your account they have to do with like your landing page form section and for a verified sending domain right now. Different kinds of records so with custom domains, it's a records with verified sending domains it CNAME records and the custom domains just function differently. So they're not they're not sending they're not being used to send mail. Like from your account. The verified sending domain is what will be used to actually send mail from your ConvertKit account and another change that will be coming soon. Is if you have multiple sending domains. In the past you've only been able to set up one verified sending domain in ConvertKit. But that's going to change at the first year also. So you'll be able to set up multiple verified sending domains at that point.
And then I just want to acknowledge the two said this is very technical. Does Google and Yahoo expect people to do this? This sounds crazy. I know. It's a lot. And there's a lot of technical jargon being thrown around. And you know, unfortunately, I mean, on the flip side, we should all hopefully guess get less spam and spoofing email. So there's certainly a plus side to it. I think. I don't think they're setting out to make this super complicated. Let's certainly I would imagine their goal isn't to make this really complicated for for small business owners who certainly didn't go into running their business and have wanting to figure out all this technical stuff. But the reality is, is that we have to we have to play by the rules because that's the world we live in.
Yeah, it's definitely very complicated and it's a it's a topic that Alyssa is my my co worker and the host of deliverable to define so you've probably heard her before if you've listened to that but her and I both have talked a lot about this, all of these changes and it is very technical and overwhelming, which is why at ConvertKit specifically, we want to try and make it as like digestible and as easy as possible for people. I am happy to get on a call individually with any of you if you need help setting it up. This is going to be something that every other ESP is having to navigate. I'm in a lot of like email channels in Slack and I see other ESPs and the things that they ask or talk about. And it's there's a lot of places having to completely change like how their infrastructure works in order to meet these requirements even just as an ESP. So I totally understand the overwhelm and it's a lot of like technicality. But if I could like say anything to make you feel better, like help make this understand and understandable or like a little easier. You will be in a good place as a sender if you set up the verified sending domain and demark it takes a little bit of effort on the front end. But ConvertKit does a really good job of monitoring like all of our accounts and making sure that we're not seeing widespread issues. It's really uncommon, that if you as a sender at ConvertKit have a super high bounce rate or a really low open rate that we we will usually reach out to you. So we're like trying to watch all of that and see if people are having issues. And also our team's totally willing to get on a call or help you all set this stuff up as much as we can. So here to help.
Yeah, when I go the ConvertKit team is amazing. It's not like a lot of other software's where you pay for it. And then you feel like you have like with Google, like many of us, unless you know someone who actually works at Google, like you can't get a hold of anyone like Google versus ConvertKit. Like they're very they're very accessible and friendly, as you can tell.
Well, I mean, I even know the postmasters that like Yahoo and Gmail and we have a hard time getting we have like a direct line to them and it's hard to get information so I totally understand the overwhelm and it's taken me like I've been doing deliverability now for five years. And it's a very complex, nuanced topic. So I think the best thing you can do is follow the steps we have in place. And if there's any confusion, like yeah, please reach out to our team and we'll help you as best we can. And I'll link I'll put my email in the chat too.
Are there any other questions? I know again, I know this is very technical. And I think you know, Melissa has been doing a really good job of breaking down something that is very technical.
I hope so I hope it wasn't too overwhelming for everyone. I know. That's a lot.
Yeah. Give folks another minute and Keith. Oh, I think I might have had another question that somebody had for me. Let me check. Um, okay, I think you kind of answered this, but one of those websites will tell you someone asked how can you tell if it's if everything was set up the right way? I think you shared one of the links, right, Chris, that will kind of help you figure out if things are set up correctly.
Yeah, there are two there's the Martian which is I added a bike around 333 Eastern Time, and that will help set up like a you know, if your demark record is set up correctly. Then there's MX toolbox, which I added just before that a little bit. And that was around 330 Eastern time.
And then gay bass and I'm pretty sure thank you Chris. You don't need to do the custom domain on CK if you don't want to.
But you don't. But there that's kind of a there might be special circumstances where you'll need a custom domain for something if that's true, I think you will know I don't want to get too into that. But the from a sending like infrastructure standpoint, the VSD is what you need to make sure that you're meeting these requirements, so you won't need that you don't need the custom domain. To meet the requirements. It's just the VSD.
And then Melanie Smith said if DMARC is set to p=equals none does demark fail?
Yes, it will fail if you don't have a verified sending domain in ConvertKit. If you do have a verified sending domain in ConvertKit, it will pass but just just because it says fail. When it's set to p equal not p equals none, it means don't do anything to my message though. So hopefully that makes sense. So if you have a verified sending domain and ConvertKit demark will not fail. Even if it says P equals none and you do not have a VSD it will say fail. Also I'm happy to I could record a video if you all think it would be helpful showing you how to pull the headers of your emails. And it's like one of the best ways to check to see if everything is correct. So if you think that will be helpful, I'm happy to create like a quick little video to show you how to do that on your own.
I think that'd be great. Thank you. I think you demonstrated that I think at the conference, right? And I was like, I wish I remembered how to do that.
It's really helpful. It's kind of like a quick like peace of mind. Okay, everything's passing. And nothing looks weird. And so that's, I mean, that's like most of my job is just like looking at message headers every day. So I'm happy to do a quick video to show you how to do that. Thank
you. Oh, and then Beth has another really good question that seem to come up does demark need to be implemented everywhere? I'm sending emails from like coasts email provider, etc.
Like so that's the so that's the scary thing about demark not to like stress you all out. If you set up demark it will. It will be effective anywhere you send mail. So if you are sending mail from anywhere else with that domain, there's likely a an email, or excuse me a domain verification process that you should go to. So the reason why we always recommend setting demark to the lowest level is so that if you have mail being sent somewhere else where you also need to add a verified domain, you don't have those emails going to spam or being bounced also. So just keep that in mind as you add demark you can't add it to particular places. It's going to affect wherever you send mail. Hopefully that makes sense.
Yeah, that feel free. Beth wants to clarify. So yes, please feel free to unmute, you should be able to. Hey,
thank you so much for all this information. It's been really helpful. So I guess I'm the easiest way I can ask this is so when I verified my sending domain, I went to Zoho, which is where my emails are coming from even though it's not my where my websites hosted. So that would make me think I would do demark through Zoho not my website. Host that sounds correct. Okay, cool. Thank you.
But DMARC is a second ask DMARC is only applicable to mass emails, not just one for placing emails.
We think about how to I'm trying to think of how to explain so if you're sending mail from I'm trying to think okay, if you're sending mail from anywhere, doesn't matter if it's like ConvertKit or if it's like let's say you use a like Shopify and you don't have an integration and like one off emails are being sent from there. You will need to verify your domain in those places. So for for Gmail I believe even you verify like if you're if that's where your mailboxes set up, I believe you still verify your domain and Gmail, although I can check on that for you all, but yeah, I guess everyone's setups a little different so it gets a little nuanced.
Alright, that's someone on muted for a second. If you have if you have a follow up question, feel free. Okay, please do Yeah, I have pop three. So yeah, I do something similar. Stephanie where like, my email gets forwarded to a Gmail account and they'll fly from that Gmail account. Yeah. My custom domain.
I can look Stephanie out. We can like get in touch and I can look at your setup. I don't think since you're forwarding, I think you'll be fine. But I can double check that for you. It's helpful to see the exact situation because everyone seriously everyone's setup is like totally different.
Yeah, I know. That's what makes it tricky is that like as business owners, we have, like creators we have different ways that we're communicating with people and making sure that everything is set up correctly. It's tricky and knowing where to even think about.
Well, and usually I mean, normally you just like setup, DNS just like hanging out in the background. And normally it's not something most people want to deal with. So you mostly weren't thinking about it. So I understand.
It looks like we might be at the end of the questions. If I missed your question, feel free to pop it back in. Otherwise we'll end here. Oh, Denise, do you have a question? It says okay, so Hana asks, Is it true that you should only have one SPF record within that your custom domain?
So your S you should only have one SPF record but that SPF record can include multiple places that send mail, if that makes sense.
And then he says, again, tell us what happens if we don't do this, which I think is worth repeating.
So and this is all like just to we're trying to make this like, Hey, this is the new requirements from Gmail and Yahoo. I personally don't believe that February 15. They're gonna just start bouncing and like sending all emails to spam. But like it's kind of like anything where it's kind of like doing an update on your phone. Like most people don't love it, because then stuff changes and it's like a pain. But we all have to because it fixes things. And so that's kind of how I'm looking at this new requirement announcement. I don't think Gmail and Yahoo are just gonna like, screw everything up like they have tons of machine learning. They're going to look at signals, they're going to figure out what's going on. But it might take a little bit of time for everything to like normalize. So the best thing you can do right now is just set up what you need to have setup. So that come February, February, you're compliant, and then you don't have to deal with potential issues that could happen. Those potential issues are things like bounces and deferrals for messages, having your messages rejected. And then just like an overall drop in your deliverability and engagement, those are some of the things that could happen. But since this is all like new in the ecosystem, we don't have like the best answers for what that actually looks like yet.
And I'd also like to point out that all of you who are here or are listening to this have done big things that were unknown to you like doing email marketing, setting up ConvertKit or whatever email marketing platform you have setting up a website and learning how to do this. So you done things that are that probably pushed your boundaries and were new and different before. So this is just another thing to throw in. There. Okay, Stephanie was just saying, sent you a question to your inbox, Melissa.
Sounds good.
Yeah. All right. I think we will end here. Thank you again, Melissa, and Chris, for coming and doing this. I really appreciate it. Thank you, everyone. Who for coming to this live and asking really great questions.
I just want to say really fast too. I will first of all, thank you all for coming. I hope it was helpful. The ConvertKit team, a lot of us will be out in the week between Christmas and New Year's. So if someone's slow to respond or if I'm gonna do the best I can. I'm trying personally to respond to like most questions about this on an individual basis. So I want to help as many people as I can but just know like, I'm going to do my best and and if you don't hear from me right away, I promise I will respond.
Right. Thank you, everyone. Enjoy the rest of your day.
