AOL and Yahoo Policies
AOL and Yahoo have implemented policies that reject emails from aol.com and yahoo.com email addresses, respectively, that do not originate from their respective email servers. Both companies implemented this policy in April 2014.
For simplification purposes, we only mention Yahoo below, however this applies equally to AOL.
The Problem
Sending a marketing email from your Yahoo email address to another Yahoo email address does not get through. Even sending it to yourself does not get through. This problem exists for every email marketing service.
The Short Explanation
All email marketing services send email from their own email servers, including Office Accelerator Email Marketing (OA). When you send a marketing email with OA, it is sent ‘from’ an email address registered to our servers (e.g. ‘postmaster@oasend.com’) and ‘on behalf of’ your Yahoo email address. When a person receives the email, it appears to be from your Yahoo address with a notation that the actual sender is the OA email address. This is how legitimate email can be sent from a Yahoo email address without being sent through a Yahoo email server. However, Yahoo’s policy now blocks your emails from getting through to other Yahoo email addresses even though the email is not actually from your Yahoo email address.
The Policy Change
Yahoo has implemented a policy (called a DMARC policy) that causes emails from a yahoo.com email address that does not originate from a Yahoo email server to be rejected. You can read more about the Yahoo policy here, and AOL policy here. Yahoo and AOL have given no indication that this policy will be removed or modified.
OA implements the standard Internet protocols that already provide assurance to receiving email servers that the emails we send on your behalf are authentic. Yahoo has decided to ignore these standards and implement this policy change instead. In our opinion, this was the lazy way and not the best way for their customers.
Recommended Solution: Use your website domain
If you own a website domain, you can create email addresses for that domain even if you don’t have a website. For example, we use addresses like ‘sales@oamobile.com’ to match our website. Contact your website domain registrar (e.g. GoDaddy) or technical consultant for information on setting this up. This solution gives you control over your email policy.
While this is the best solution, it may take a while to setup. So, if you want to start sending emails right away, check out the alternate solution below.
Alternate Solution: Sign up for another email account
There are alternative free email accounts you can use to send email with OA. Just take a minute to sign up for one of these and you can get started immediately. Here are a couple of links to popular free email providers:
Since any of these free email accounts could implement policies that limit email marketing service providers, we encourage you to eventually implement the Recommended Solution above.