Nearly 48.63% of all emails sent in the world in 2022 were spam, reports Kaspersky Anti-Virus. As we approach 2024, Google & Yahoo are determined to change this. Earlier last month, Google announced its new set of policies for spam prevention and protection which will come into effect by February 2024.

In this article, we walk you through what these policies are, what they mean for GTM teams, and why would you rethink how your GTM teams use email as a channel for funnel conversions.

What are Google's new spam prevention policies?

Effective from February 2024, Google will require bulk email senders who send more than 5,000 messages per day to:

1) Strongly Authenticate their emails: Senders with a significant volume of messages are needed to authenticate their emails following Google's best practices. This will help Google recognize that you and your domain are legit.

2) Enable easy opt-out: Google now requires email senders to enable a one-click unsubscribe link in all their emails. This ensures that email receivers don't have to jump through hoops to opt out of unwanted sequences.

3) Ensure minimum spam rate: Google will prevent senders who violate the “clear spam rate threshold” of 0.3% of messages sent and possibly block their domains. You need to ensure the person receiving your email actually wants it.

Google's policy recommendations don't cut it - you should have been authenticating your emails and enabling easy unsubscribes anyway.

If email is a channel that's driving conversions for you, and you've scaled it, you probably have been doing these things all along.

What does it mean for GTM teams?

Marketers, sales reps, and ops teams all rely on email as a channel to hit the metrics they care about throughout the funnel. 43% of sales reps say email is the most effective channel for selling, reports HubSpot.

These policy changes put a nail in the coffin of the "spray and pray" email campaigns era.

Along with it, it takes down the age-old "predictable revenue" playbook of building massive sales teams, blasting thousands of emails, and optimizing a funnel structured on the number of people you hit at the top.

The answer no longer lies in more touches but in smarter touches. Smarter touches which are based on product usage milestones, with copy personalized to their interactions with your product and pain points, and to the right economic buyer who potentially might not be in your product.

This means you have to think twice and then once again before you upload your "contact list" to the sales engagement of your choice. You have to be mindful about:

1) Who are you reaching?

2) When are you reaching them?

3) And with what message?

Without custom segmentation and targeted outreach, sales and marketing teams stand to lose e-mail as a channel for pipeline generation. A different channel isn’t the answer either. It never was.

Fatigue is real when you spray and pray - with in-app nudges, with CRM syncs, as it is with email.

How should you prepare for Google's new spam prevention policies?

All roads lead to custom segmentation and targeted outreach as the path forward with tools like Toplyne.

Toplyne AI lets you find custom audiences who fit within Google and Yahoo's e-mail spam prevention policies - so you can run bulk e-mail campaigns at scale.

Get qualified users based on product usage, time your outreach based on in-product milestones, with personalized messaging that resonates with them.

Companies like RocketReach, Vercel, and Murf AI use Toplyne to segment their users based on product usage, time their outreach based on in-product milestones, and reach out to them with personalized messaging that really resonates.

The new spam policies change nothing for them. If you have the intelligence layer between your data and your downstream GTM apps, you’ll never have to worry about fatigue or email policies.

Need help with running bulk email campaigns in light of Google's new policies? See Toplyne in action.