Recommendations for Sending Bulk Emails
Learn about the Division of IT's recommendations for sending bulk emails to the Stevens community. These recommendations are based on the significant changes in email providers' spam-prevention policies.
Security changes announced by Google and Yahoo will impact the delivery of forwarded mail and bulk messaging from the Stevens.edu domain sent to external email services (i.e. Gmail or Yahoo) starting February 1, 2024.
Senders like Stevens that exceed what Google and Yahoo consider to be a “spam threshold,” will be blocked by Gmail and Yahoo.
1. Consolidate all bulk mailing platforms to Emma.
Any bulk mailings being sent from the Steven.edu domain should utilize the Emma platform. The Division of IT has configured the DNS (Domain Name System), set up DKIM, and more to ensure that Stevens students, faculty and staff receive emails from the Stevens domain to their Stevens.edu email account.
Since other bulk mailing platforms could send out emails using the Stevens.edu domain, any reputation impact to them will inadvertently impact the Stevens.edu domain's reputation. In troubleshooting the Gmail spam issue in early 2023, we found three of these services with bad IP reputations.
2. All bulk emails should follow industry best practices.
Besides domain reputation score, public email providers use additional checks when handling bulk messages i.e. unsubscribe links, and use of HTML and embedded links.
The Division of IT recommends using Emma for sending bulk messages as we have already set perimeters and best practices when mailing from the Stevens.edu domain internally (i.e. email@stevens.edu) and externally (i.e. email@gmail.com or email@yahoo.com). This will improve email delivery to external recipients and protect Stevens domain reputation.
3. Use the Stevens secondary domain (announcement.stevens.edu) to send bulk emails.
For all bulk messages, marketing, and communication to external users, IT is recommending using a subdomain. This will guard the root domain (Stevens.edu) from any third-party reputation issue.
For information and access to the subdomain announcement.stevens.edu, please submit a ticket to support@stevens.edu.
4. Discourage auto email forwarding from Stevens.edu.
Stevens historically has allowed users to automatically forward emails from their Stevens.edu mailbox to an external email address (i.e. Gmail or Yahoo). The Division of IT discourages users from forwarding their Stevens email address to outside email service.
In early 2023 we discovered that users are marking forwarded emails processed through the Stevens.edu domain as spam. Since this is a forwarded message Gmail and Yahoo AI/ML systems are flagging the Stevens.edu domain and lowering our domain reputation score.
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