Email Authentication Records
Over the past few years, email authentication has become increasingly important to optimize delivery of messages. The goal of these email-related DNS records is to ensure delivery of legitimate email and block unwanted spam.
Have you experienced issues with messages sent from your own domain winding up in a spam folder—or never even arriving in the recipient’s inbox? (Nearly all of us have at some point.) This may be due to missing email authentication records. If you do not currently have DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records in place for your domain, we highly recommend implementing them.
Third-Party Senders
These records are especially important to have in place if you send email using a third-party platform or service such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or SendGrid, or if you are routing outgoing mail through a third-party SMTP server. Otherwise, many of these messages will end up in spam folders or be rejected by the recipients’ mail servers. Additionally, a high volume of unauthorized messages like this can negatively impact the delivery rates of your personal and transactional email.
Incorporation of email authentication records will reduce the number of outgoing messages that end up in your recipients’ spam folders. Even if you haven’t noticed any message delivery issues, adding these records can help avoid issues in the future. Large email providers like Office 365, Google/Gmail, and Yahoo recommend these records and will likely require them in the future.
Protecting Your Reputation
Additionally, properly configured DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records will help guard your company’s reputation. If you have not yet established these records and are not actively monitoring DMARC reports and feedback from mail service providers, you are at increased risk of fraud and phishing. When customers, vendors, and partners receive illegitimate emails that appear to be from your organization and your domain, your brand and reputation could be threatened. Protecting your hard-earned name and professional image is vital. With these records in place, it will be much more difficult for spammers to forge or fake email using your domain name.
Taking Action
Interested in adding email authentication records to your domain? We can help! We’ll coordinate and consult as needed with your mail provider or IT support to help craft, implement, and monitor appropriate DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records to maximize the delivery rate of your outgoing email. Additionally, we can monitor email authentication reports on a regular basis to ensure all legitimate sources are whitelisted.
Questions about email authentication, or any other aspect of our website design or web and email hosting services? Contact us.
