Gmail is no longer going to allow @gmail.com from addresses, as the “From address” in email to your list. Microsoft is right behind them as well.
They are going to do this with their DMARC policy. Changes have yet to be made, but we expect them to occur by the end of March.
This will also affect forms on sites that “Refer a friend” when the referrer uses a Gmail from address, in the form as the sender.
What You Need To Know
You are very soon not going to be able to use @gmail.com from addresses in broadcast and follow up email to your list. The update is expected in late June, 2016.
This will NOT affect your ability to use a free Gmail address to run your business.
To improve deliverability, we encourage you to use a From email address at a domain owned by you or your organization, like firstname.lastname@mycompany.com. Not only will this help avoid delivery issues, it can help your subscribers recognize your brand.
But What If I Have Been Using @Gmail.com As My From Address?
Time to make changes now!
All you have to do is set up email on your domain and pull from the POP on the Domain into Gmail. Real easy since every email marketer owns a Domain. It’s not like it will cost a dime to ditch the free email from address.
Below Is The Technical Low Down On DMARC, Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo
First off, you can check Gmail’s DMARC Policy here…
When this:
[v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:mailauth-reports@google.com]
Changes to this
p=reject; changes to p=reject;
Then the changes are live.
DMARC – The policy frame work for who can use your Domain in email, has been used by Gmail and Yahoo, and very soon all Microsoft properties, to disallow using free email addresses as from addresses in your autoresponder or email software.
This is a response by the free email providers to stop spam being sent with free email addresses as the reply to- or from address.
Here is Google’s Announcement:
To further bolster the proven utility of DMARC, Google has announced that they will be moving their hosted mailbox services to a similarly strict DMARC policy in 2016. “Google is committed to email authentication. In June of 2016, we will be taking a big step by moving gmail.com to DMARC policy p=reject.” said John Rae-Grant, Lead Product Manager for Gmail. “We are pleased to be supporting the ARC protocol to help mailing list operators adapt to the need for strong authentication.”
https://dmarc.org/2015/10/global-mailbox-providers-deploying-dmarc-to-protect-users/
https://sendgrid.com/blog/gmail-dmarc-update-2016/
https://help.yahoo.com/kb/account/yahoo-dmarc-policy-sln24050.html
https://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/82426971544/an-update-on-our-dmarc-policy-to-protect-our-users
Mail Chimp has a great explanation of how they are handling this…
http://kb.mailchimp.com/delivery/deliverability-research/about-dmarc