Groove Bulk Send Requirements

Google and Yahoo have measures to reduce spam emails and improve email security and deliverability for their users by enforcing strict requirements on bulk email sends. Clari recommends that all users comply with these new requirements and maintain a healthy domain reputation.

• All senders of commercial email

• Email deliverability

• Email provider requirements

 

 

How To Ensure You're a Reputable Sender

In this section, we cover:

 

• Proper Authentication

• Include One-Click Unsubscribe Links in Emails

• Monitor Spam Rate Threshold

• Use Groove Settings to Prevent Being Marked As Spam

• Encourage Good Email Composition Practices

We are recommending that bulk senders authenticate their emails, ensuring that the sender's identity is verified, thereby closing security loopholes exploited by attackers. All emails should be authenticated using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Typically for most organizations, these changes are made by your IT or Engineering department.

 

To perform a quick and easy check to see if you are set up correctly, check here.

 

Alternatively, you can check with Google as well.

 

Check whether or not an SPF/DKIM/DMARC are set up correctly: If you have a user’s email, you can easily do this using the header information with the Google Message Header Tool.

 

• Basic Setup Video for SPF

• Add your SPF record at your domain provider

• Turn on DKIM for your domain

• Add your DMARC record

 

 

If DKIM does not pass: Please reference the below to fix depending on your email provider.

 

• Gmail

• Office 365

 

Include Unsubscribe Links in Emails

 

Setting Up Unsubscribe Links In Individual Email Templates

If you want to insert an unsubscribe link into your individual template, you can by using the Merge Field below:

{!Unsubscribe.Click here to unsubscribe.}

 

 

Setting Up Unsubscribe Links Across a Groove Team

Groove Admins and Team Leads have the option to set up unsubscribe links for all emails sent from a specific Groove team by default.

 

1. To do this, go to Manage My Org > Teams (left nav)
2. Select the Team you want to edit
3. Then click Team Settings and enable "Include Unsubscribe Links in Emails."

 

 

 

Setting Up Unsubscribe Links Across the Entire Organization

Groove Admins also have the option to enable unsubscribe links for all users across their organization.

 

1. From Clari Studio, go to Manage My Org
2. Click Flows and Actions (left nav)
3. Toggle Enforce Unsubscribe for Flows (shown below)

 

Below Enforce Unsubscribe for Flows, you can: 

 

• Enable one-click enforcement for Flows in Manage My Org to provide the necessary header when Groove Flows send an email on a user’s behalf. 
• Use the Customize Unsubscribe Footer section to create a custom unsubscribe message.

 

Note: Unsubscribe must be enforced for Flows to view the One-Click Unsubscribe option (see Setting Up Unsubscribe Links Across the Entire Organization above).

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer

Groove’s one-click unsubscribe feature simply provides the expected unsubscribe link when Groove Flows send an email on a user’s behalf via the Google or Microsoft APIs. Gmail then uses algorithms to determine whether to display the link or not based on factors like the sender’s reputation, how often they send emails, and how users interact with their emails. If Gmail doesn’t think the campaign is eligible, it might not show the one-click unsubscribe link. This means that the link is not guaranteed to be sent 100% of the time through Groove Flows, even with the setting enabled. 

 

Monitor Spam Rate Threshold

Google gives visibility into an org’s spam compliant rates via Google Postmaster.

 

Review your org’s current rates within Postmaster. Gmail recommends spam complaint rates stay below 0.3%. If you send to a mix of Gmail recipients and recipients on other mailbox providers, the spam complaint rates reported by Gmail’s Postmaster Tools are a good indicator of an org’s spam complaint rates at mailbox providers who don’t let you view metrics.

 

Use Groove Settings to Prevent Being Marked As Spam

Email Throttling

For Gmail users, there is a daily limit of 2,000 emails sent in a 24-hour period, and for Outlook users, the limit is 5,000 emails sent in a 24-hour period. Once you hit that limit, you are locked out of Gmail or Outlook until that email count resets. Additionally, all emails sent through Groove Flow also contribute to this number. Reps sending, scheduling, and auto-sending hundreds of emails per day will potentially block them from sending any emails at all. Without any kind of limits around how many flow emails a user can send each day, they can get into trouble when they hit these sending limits.

 

With Email Throttle, managers and admins can help their users avoid these issues, by limiting and staggering the volume of emails their users send out through flows!

 

We have already pre-set the limits for you so you will be prepared for the change.

 

 

• For G-Suite customers, the Email Throttle max is 1,800 Flow emails per day

• For Microsoft 365 customers, the Email Throttle Max is 4,500 flow emails per day.

• You can display the "Email Throttle" column by going to the Settings Cog at the top right and selecting that option.

 

How to Set an Email Sending Limit

 

1. Go to your Users Page in Manage My Org

2. Select the User/Users you want to set an Email Throttle to

3. Click on Actions and Scroll down to "Set Email Throttle Max"

4. Use the arrow keys or type in an Email Max you wish to set!

Flow Import Settings

Flow Import Rules can be used to set parameters around which records cannot be imported into a flow. These parameters can be set at the flow level or at the global level using Salesforce fields.

 

Enabling the activation queue on a flow can help manage the amount of work that becomes active in a flow in a given time period. This can either be set up to automatically activate on a specific time cadence, or you can have the user activate specific records manually.

 

Activation settings are only found at the flow level under the "Settings Tab". 

 

1. Go to Flows
2. Click the Flow you want to change Activation Settings for
3. Go to Settings (top tab) 
4. Click Activation Queue (left nav)
5. The queue will be off by default on any existing or new flows created, but can be turned on as needed:

 

 

 

Encourage Good Email Composition Practices

1. Avoid spam-like email subject lines: keep shorter when possible, avoid misleading subjects, avoid anything in all capital letters, odd characters etc.

2. Avoid spam-like email bodies: be mindful of the number of links, images, bold type and the amount of formatting in general.

3. Tips for Avoiding Spam Filters

4. Don't blast many leads/contacts at the same company on the same day. Their server may quickly learn and detect this activity as spam. Groove's import rules functionality can help here as well.

5. Yahoo Sender Best Practices

 

We know that these upcoming changes may have an impact on some organizations. But our team is here to work with you to ensure preparedness for these and future changes. We will be monitoring for changes to other email providers and provide updates on how to meet the requirements.

 

 

Other Links:

• Google announcement

• Google email sender guidelines

• Google email sender FAQ

• Google Postmaster

• Yahoo announcement

• Yahoo sender best practices

• Y! Sender Hub