Resources

 

 

 

2025 Backstage Pass Website

Webinars

Like our conference, these digital marketing webinars and case studies were created to educate leaders in the healthcare industry on emerging Internet technologies and to provide an environment in which healthcare marketers, Web leaders, IT professionals and strategists can learn from the other attendees and presenters.

 

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Stay connected by tuning into the latest broadcasts, where strategic leaders share their perspectives on emerging trends and pressing challenges in the healthcare industry. Together, we’ll delve into groundbreaking innovations and pivotal policy updates shaping the future of healthcare.

Catch the audio-only episodes on Touch Point Media, available on your favorite podcast streaming platforms.

 

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The Latest Hospital Digital Marketing Articles

 GreyMatters is your hospital digital marketing guide, with articles on hospital digital marketing best practices, trends, updates and more.

Update on Bulk Email Restrictions: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft

It has been almost three years since Google and Yahoo announced new requirements for users of bulk email to go into effect in February 2024. GreyMatters reported this in our December 2023 edition

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Microsoft initiated its own restrictions a year later in April 2024 that were basically the same as those of Google and Yahoo. Their restrictions applied to Outlook.com, hotmail.com, and live.com.

Here is a review of what the email authentication of all three platform requirements entailed:

  • Authentication of outgoing emails. This involves three interacting mechanisms:
    • Sender Policy Framework (SPF) – helps to prevent domain spoofing by providing a means for senders to identify the email servers that are approved to send emails from their domain.
    • DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) – attaches a digital signature to outgoing emails to verify the sender’s authorization and confirm that there was no tampering with the email on its route to the recipient.
    • Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) – this providers email senders a means to specify the actions to be taken if an email fails authentication, as well as providing reporting on email authentication results.
  • Reported spam rates. Google requires a reported spam rate of below 0.10%, and a sender should avoid reaching 0.30% or higher at any time. It’s easy for a recipient to report an email as spam, and that generally depends on the value the recipient places on an email. This is not always dependent on the sender. To get around having authentic emails flagged as spam, there are a couple of suggested strategies:
    • Pay attention to send times. Avoid sending at the top or bottom of the hour, when most bulk emails are sent.
    • Allow recipients a means to set up email preferences, such as frequency of emails, choice of products and categories included in email messages.
  • Easy-to-use unsubscribe function. Google requires a one-step unsubscribe function, so this should already be a part of any bulk email message.

DMARC updates for June 2026

Two new DMARC parameters have been announced, and two existing parameters are being deprecated.

New DMARC parameters:

  • “np=” (non-existent domain policy). Used to prevent spoofing non-existent domain.
  • “psd=” (public suffix domain indicator).
  • “t=” (test mode). Replaces the PCT percentage tag.

Deprecated parameters:

  • “pct” (percentage)
  • “ri=” (reporting interval)

Also, the “p=” parameter is now recommended instead of mandatory.

Google Postmaster Tools has been updated to provide deliverability analysis with plain language feedback.