If you’re a GMAIL user, you may have noticed a new icon appearing in your emails the last couple of days.
It’s an alert that lets you know that the sender didn’t use an encrypted email protocol called TLS. While marketing messages probably don’t need to be encrypted, there are instances where it’s not a bad idea. Such as sending passwords for membership sites. But regardless, it may cause a bit of panic for people when they first see it popping up on your emails.
Here’s what Google has to say about it.
Not every ESP is supporting TLS. Yet.
Here’s what I’m seeing so far in the emails I’m receiving.
If you’re on the following ESPs, your emails are encrypted….
Active Campaign
Go To Webinar
Go To Meeting
MailChimp (I’ve seen both)
Hubspot
Drip
If you’re on these, your emails are not encrypted and your customers are seeing the red padlock.
Infusionsoft
Aweber
Ontraport
MailChimp (I’ve seen both)
Now that Gmail has added the padlock to their interface, I’m sure all the ESPs will scramble to get their servers encrypted. Ontraport has already said they’re working on it and hope to have it added soon.
In the meantime, if you’re using one of the non-encrypted services, you may be fielding some customer questions about it.
As a customer of one of the non-encrypted services, there isn’t much you can do at this point. Other than making sure your ESP knows about the situation (pretty sure they all do at this point) and how badly you want it resolved. Because this is done at the server level, it may or may not be a quick fix for your ESP.