Email is still the channel a brand owns outright, but the big mailbox providers now reject mail that breaks their rules. Those rules apply wherever you send from, the Gulf included.
Gmail
- Every sender needs SPF or DKIM, valid forward and reverse DNS, TLS and correctly formatted messages, and should keep the spam rate in Postmaster Tools below 0.10%, never reaching 0.30%.
- Bulk senders, those sending 5,000 or more messages to personal Gmail accounts in 24 hours, need SPF, DKIM and DMARC. The DMARC policy can be none, but the From domain must align with SPF or DKIM. The count is per primary domain, so subdomains add up, and once you reach it you are classed as a bulk sender permanently.
- Marketing mail needs one-click unsubscribe in the message headers, plus a visible unsubscribe link.
- Google says it began ramping up enforcement in November 2025, with temporary and permanent rejections.
Yahoo
All senders need SPF or DKIM and a spam rate below 0.3%. Bulk senders need SPF and DKIM, a passing DMARC policy of at least none, alignment and one-click unsubscribe, and must honour unsubscribes within two days.
Outlook.com
Since May 2025, domains sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Outlook.com, Hotmail and Live addresses need SPF and DKIM to pass and an aligned DMARC policy of at least none. Microsoft's support pages describe failing mail being rejected with error 550 5.7.515.
Open rates are not what they seem
Apple's Mail Privacy Protection stops senders seeing whether a message was opened. Litmus's July 2026 data puts Apple at 62% of global email opens, and says privacy protection affects roughly 55 to 60% of all opens. Treat open rates as a rough signal and measure clicks and conversions instead.
Your logo in the inbox
BIMI shows your logo beside your messages in Gmail. It needs DMARC set to quarantine or reject at 100%, a verified mark certificate, which requires a registered trademark, or a common mark certificate, and an SVG logo in a specific format. Only the verified certificate earns the checkmark. BIMI is the only place a strict DMARC policy is required; the bulk sender rules accept none.
Arabic emails
- Set dir="rtl" on the html element, and set the language separately.
- Expect quirks. Tests have found Gmail sometimes flips a whole email to right-to-left, and Outlook mishandling links in mixed-direction text, so test in each client.
- Web fonts do not work in Gmail or Yahoo, so give Arabic text a system font fallback.
Consent
We found no UAE rule specific to commercial email. The telemarketing rules name calls, SMS and social media apps. Saudi Arabia's data protection law requires consent and an easy opt-out for marketing to personal contact details, email included. Opt-in lists are the safe standard across the Gulf.
A checklist
- Publish SPF, DKIM and DMARC for every sending domain, aligned with the From address.
- Add one-click unsubscribe headers, and process unsubscribes within two days.
- Watch your spam rate in Gmail's Postmaster Tools.
- Send to people who opted in, and remove the long inactive.
- Report clicks and conversions, not opens.
The UTM builder on this site tags email links so each campaign shows up properly in analytics.
