Why are these Changes Required?
Google and Yahoo recently announced an upcoming change to their policies for bulk email senders to improve filtering capabilities for spam, phishing, and promotional emails. As a part of Bullhorn’s commitment to creating an incredible experience, we are working to ensure our products are compliant with these new policies ahead of their February 1, 2024 enforcement.
What are the Required Changes?
It is of vital importance to complete all of the steps below. For more information and resources for additional Bullhorn products, please review our blog and contact Bullhorn Support with any questions.
Actions Required with your DNS Hosting Provider
You will need to make the updates below with your DNS Hosting Provider to properly authorize Bullhorn to deliver your emails. The following updates must be made in your DNS provider’s settings and should take no more than 20 minutes:
1: Create CNAME Record for DKIM Compliance
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is an email security standard designed to ensure that emails aren't altered in transit between the sending and recipient servers.
The CNAME record should read:
Host: bnd._domainkey.mydomainname.com
Points to: bnd._domainkey.adaptondemand.com
Bullhorn will then complete the DKIM setup.
2: Update SPF Records
Email providers will look for a Sender Policy Framework (SPF Record) to verify that the email they are receiving is an email sent by the actual sender and not a forgery sent by a spammer or otherwise unsavory character. Yours must be updated to include Bullhorn specific SPF records.
SPF record should read: v=spf1 [YOUR EXISTING RECORDS HERE]
(Preferred)
include:_spf.adaptondemand.com ~all
(Alternative)
ip4:52.129.19.114 ip4:185.9.168.4 ~all
3: Add TXT DNS Record for DMARC Compliance
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) makes it easier for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to prevent malicious email practices, such as domain spoofing.
If your configuration already has a value for _dmarc.yourdomain.com (where “yourdomain.com” represents your specific domain name), no additional changes are necessary.
If this value does not exist, create a new record of type TXT with the following values (replace “yourdomain.com” with your specific domain name:
Name: _dmarc.yourdomain.com
Contents: v=DMARC1; p=none;
Review this linked article for more information.
Actions Required for Unsubscribe Functionality within Eshots
Google is requiring that large senders give Gmail recipients the ability to unsubscribe from commercial email in one click, and that they process unsubscription requests within two days.
We are accomplishing this by adding an Unsubscribe Header to Eshots, and this requires some steps to complete alongside the above DNS changes:
1: Create or Designate an Unsubscribe Email Address
You must create or designate an email inbox to handle incoming emails requesting that a person’s record be unsubscribed from commercial mailings.
You can utilize an already existing email address and inbox. This may not be ideal as it could potentially receive a large volume of traffic in response to your Eshot campaigns, and a dedicated email may be preferred.
An example would be something like ‘unsubscribe@yourdomain.com’.
2: Provide Unsubscribe Email Address to Technical Support
You must provide your designated unsubscribe email address to Technical Support so that they can add it to your record.
This is one email address per client, so your individual users will not have their own version.
This email will be used as the Mailto: address we are inserting into the Unsubscribe Header.
Without this Unsubscribe Email address on file with Bullhorn (Bond/Adapt) Support, your users will see an error message when attempting to send an Eshot.
This is effective with the install of Adapt version 2024.1, currently scheduled for Sunday, 28th of January 2024.
3: Monitor this Inbox for Unsubscribe Requests
Once implemented, it is your responsibility to monitor this inbox for requests to unsubscribe!
There is no automation from Adapt to handle these requests as they come in.
A user must take each incoming request to unsubscribe and modify any record with that email address.
With GDPR and the release of Adapt 2.8, all new Candidate and Contact records have the Eshot Permission field set to No by default.
Only Candidate or Contact records with their Eshot Permission field set to Yes would expect to receive Eshot solicitations.
Any unsubscribe request received via this email should be treated the same as any other direct request to unsubscribe, and the record should be modified to reset the Eshot Permission field back to No.