Understanding Apple and Yahoo’s New Functionality: What Email Senders Should Know

Mailbox providers love to keep email senders on their toes! This past year has seen several changes and improvements already, and it’s looking like there’s more to come. We started off the year with Gmail and Yahoo updating their requirements for authentication (requiring DKIM, SPF, DMARC compliance), the list-unsubscribe requirement, enforcement of the 0.3 percent complaint threshold, launch of new bounce codes, and additional features in Gmail’s Postmaster Tools Dashboard .  

It’s a lot. But even if the rush to ensure compliance caused some minor panic among senders, these new requirements are important. They protect subscribers from phishing attempts and spammers, while also giving subscribers more control over their inboxes. We want people to continue to value email, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to see mailbox providers innovating to keep inboxes safe and secure.  

And the fun continues! The start of this year was all about requirements and enforcements. As we move into the second half of the year, email senders are looking ahead to prepare for new features recently announced by Apple and Yahoo.   

Apple Mail Tabs 

At WWDC 2024, Apple announced a new feature with their iOS 18 release that will include categories, similar to the Gmail tabs we’re all familiar with. Their categories will include: 

• Primary: emails from people you know and messages that are time-sensitive 
• Transactions: Receipts and order confirmations 
• Updates: Newsletters and social media 
• Promotions: Marketing and sales emails 
• All Mail: All your email regardless of category 

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They’re also including what they call a ‘Digest View’ to showcase all emails from a brand or business in one single place. You can see this in practice in the recording of Apple’s WWDC presentation at the 23 minute mark. 

How will this affect senders? As with Gmail tabs, many senders will be hyper-focused on avoiding the Promo tab and jockeying for placement into Primary. And just like with Gmail, we don’t recommend trying to game the system because it’s just not worth it. People set up tabs because they want their email organized that way, and they will check all their tabs accordingly. They will be annoyed and more likely to complain about a promotional email that invades their primary space if they didn’t choose for it to be there. 

We may see changes in click through rates and engagement until the dust settles. We may see people not adopting the tabs feature and sticking with just the “All Mail” view. It’s hard to say for sure what the outcome will be, but it’s still exciting to see changes coming. It keeps the job interesting!  

Apple Intelligence 

Artificial Intelligence has been the hot topic of conversation over the past year, and Apple has now announced their own AI solution. There are many features bundled into Apple Intelligence such as writing, priority notifications, transcribing, and more.  

And, of course, this solution will have an impact on your inbox. One feature lets senders mark priority messages in email, which will place time-sensitive messages, such as deadlines and check-in reminders, at the top of the inbox.  

Another feature is a tl;dr summary, or a quick summary of a long email to help readers
quickly digest the key information. It’s not clear if this will affect marketing or personal text-based emails, but it’s a feature to watch. It seems like AI-generated summaries of online meetings or Google’s AI search summary.  

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There are also some design features included that will hopefully be good tools for graphic designers to add to their repertoire.  

Yahoo Inbox AI 

Not to be left behind, Yahoo Mail is innovating with AI too. The mailbox provider recently announced their inbox redesign which has AI powered features to help manage email messages. Currently available in beta mode, the new desktop experience includes:  

• Priority Inbox, a new tab, which, like Gmail’s, uses AI to highlight what Yahoo determines to be your most important messages. 

• Concise, AI-generated summaries of an email’s content, along with bulleted lists of proposed actions and tasks. This will be under the new Priority Inbox tab.  

• Quick action buttons, which will appear directly inside the inbox, will allow users to add an event to a calendar, track packages, check in for flights. and take other direct actions from email messages.   

• A “starred view” panel which lets users quickly view and access their most important tasks.  

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While these features are intended to make inbox management easier for Yahoo users, the impact on senders is yet to be determined. In preparation, we recommend signing up for Yahoo’s new Sender Hub Dashboard for additional insight, including Complaint Feedback Loop (CFL) enrollment. Note: senders already enrolled in the CFL service (via the old form) are required to set up an account in the new Sender Hub and re-enroll by August 1, 2024 to continue receiving complaint data. Yahoo has promised additional services for senders coming soon in the Sender Hub Dashboard.   

What’s next?

2024 has been a year of change for the email industry, with even more innovations and updates to come. As email marketers prepare for these changes, we will want to understand what—if any—impact they will have on deliverability. For more insight on what’s new in email deliverability, watch our on-demand webinar: “How to Reach More Inboxes and Avoid the Spam Folder in 2024.”