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Email Domain Authentication- What You Need to Know

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Digital Marketing / January 26, 2023

For brands who want to stay in the email marketing game for the long-run, authenticating your email is a quick task that provides a long-lasting impact.

Authenticating your domain as a verified sender provides the highest return in the long-run for the time it takes to do it. When you authenticate your domain, you essentially improve deliverability by telling your clients that your domain name is sending the email, and not the email service provider (ESP) like Klaviyo or Mailchimp. 

This is done to prevent email spoofing and to ensure that messages are delivered to the intended recipients.

What is email authentication, and why is it important?

Every email has to be sent by “someone”. When you send an email from your personal account, your email address is used to identify you as the sender. This email address contains a prefix, the @ symbol and a domain, as shown in this example:

However, when using email service providers (ESPs) like Mailchimp or Klaviyo, you are by default sending emails under their domain that they share with everybody else. 

As an example, using Gmail, this is what it looks like on the receiver’s end:

What are the benefits?

Authenticating an email is like a verified instagram account; it helps to protect the reputation of the sender. This is because when an email message is authenticated, the recipient’s email server can verify that the message is coming from the sender it claims to be coming from. This can help to prevent messages from being marked as spam or outright rejected.

Email authentication also helps to ensure the deliverability of messages. This is because when an email message is authenticated, the recipient’s email server can be confident that the message is not coming from a spoofed or forged address. This can help to prevent messages from being delivered to the wrong recipient or being lost altogether.

Another important aspect of email authentication is that it can help prevent phishing and other malicious activity. Phishing is a type of scam in which the attacker attempts to trick the recipient into providing sensitive information, such as login credentials or credit card information. By authenticating emails, the recipient’s email server can be confident that the message is coming from a legitimate sender, rather than a phisher.

What does authentication look like?

There are 3 popular types of email authentication methods available:

  • SPF (Sender Policy Framework)

SPF is a mechanism that allows a domain owner to publish a list of authorized mail servers that are allowed to send email on behalf of their domain.

  • DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)

DKIM uses a digital signature to verify that an email message has not been tampered with in transit and that it is coming from the domain it claims to be coming from.

  • DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance)

DMARC is an email authentication protocol that is designed to give email domain owners the ability to protect their domain from unauthorized use, known as email spoofing.

By implementing the above-mentioned methods, email marketers can improve their email deliverability, protect their reputation and build trust with their audiences.

When should I authenticate my email?

When you’re new to email marketing, using a dedicated sending domain may not be the best idea if your domain is new and has no established reputation. Spam filters may be hesitant to trust mail coming from a domain that’s not been around for long.

In these cases, it’s best to use the default shared sending domain while you work on building a good reputation for your brand’s domain. Once you’ve been sending emails for at least 30 days with good results, you can then consider setting up a dedicated sending domain. 

However, you should still be mindful of best practices, such as not sending emails to unengaged or purchased lists, as this can harm your sending reputation even if your domain is new.

How to Authenticate Your Domain

So, now begs the question, how does one go about authenticating their domain? 

There are a few ways of doing this, depending on what marketing automation company you decide to use. While it isn’t necessarily difficult to authenticate a domain, there are quite a few steps involved so we would recommend checking out the following articles from Mailchimp and Klaviyo to read their detailed step by step instructions.

It is important to note before getting started that authenticating email addresses from public email services like Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL isn’t usually possible. However, all domains that you or your business own and control can and should absolutely be authenticated.

Email domain authentication can seem like a daunting technical task, but rest assured it isn’t as complicated as it may seem. It will provide your business with credibility and security that will allow your email marketing efforts to flourish over time, so it’s definitely a time investment worth making. 

If you would like to read more about other ways you can improve your email marketing success, check out the 5 Best Email Marketing Practices here!

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