In the intricate landscape of email marketing, achieving high deliverability is paramount for the success of any campaign. Your messages have to arrive into your users’ inbox! So... how do we do it?
Email deliverability refers to the ability of an email message to successfully reach the recipient’s inbox without being marked as spam. To enhance this crucial aspect, implementing robust authentication protocols is indispensable.
What techniques do we use to ensure that your email deliverability strategy is strong and sound? Meet our heroes: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
These acronyms may not sound significant, but they are crucial to ensuring that your messages reach their intended recipients and that your reputation as a sender remains secure in the digital realm. This becomes even more critical from February 2024, as Google and Yahoo! Mail will demand these legitimacy protocols from any company sending more than 5,000 email messages to their users’ inboxes.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Shielding Your Identity
The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) plays a crucial role as an authentication protocol, preventing spammers from spoofing their messages through the server of the alleged sender. SPF works by allowing domain owners to specify which mail servers may send emails on behalf of their domain. This is achieved through DNS (Domain Name System) records that contain information about authorized mail servers.
Implementation of SPF
To implement SPF, the domain owner (that is, you as the sender) publishes a TXT record in their DNS configuration, listing the IP addresses of authorised mail servers.
When someone receives an email, the recipient’s email server checks the SPF record to verify whether the sending server is among the authorised sources. If the check fails, it may flag the email as suspicious or send it to the spam folder.
One should always be careful when touching anything related to DNS. If you do not feel confident editing this configuration, you can ask your hosting or email services provider, or we can do it on your behalf.
Benefits of SPF
So why should you put up with the inconvenience of implementing SPF in your DNS? Well, the benefits are for both you and your recipient: it protects the latter from attacks but also your messages have much higher chances of being read.
These benefits are:
- It mitigates email spoofing and phishing attacks;
- It enhances the legitimacy of your emails;
- It boosts email deliverability by reducing the likelihood of messages being marked as spam.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Cryptographic Assurance
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is another essential authentication method. It adds a cryptographic signature to email headers, allowing the recipient server to verify the authenticity of the message’s sending server.
DKIM uses a public-private key pair to sign outgoing emails. The recipient’s email server uses the public key to verify the signature.
Implementation of DKIM
To implement DKIM, the sending mail server signs outgoing messages with a private key, and the domain owner publishes the corresponding public key in the DNS. This means that both the servers we use to send your email marketing messages and the DNS in your domain have to be synchronised in the private/public key they use.
Upon receiving an email, the recipient’s server retrieves the public key from the DNS of the sending server and uses it to verify the signature. If the signature is valid, the email is considered authentic. Beautifully simple.
Benefits of DKIM
As with SPF, the benefits of DKIM are for both you and your recipients:
- It guards against email tampering during transit;
- It builds trust with recipients by ensuring email integrity;
- It helps prevent phishing and protects the reputation of your domain.
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): Orchestrating Authentication
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is the boss of the three. It stands as a crucial pillar in email security. This protocol empowers you as a domain owner to assert your email authentication policies. It ensures that recipients can distinguish your legitimate emails from potential threats sent from another email server by spammers trying to forge your identity.
DMARC goes beyond SPF and DKIM by offering a comprehensive framework to authenticate and validate emails. It instructs email providers on how to handle unauthenticated messages. It therefore plays a pivotal role in reducing phishing risks and fortifying the trustworthiness of email communications.
Implementation of DMARC
So how does it really work? We already know that SPF allows domain owners to specify which email servers are authorized to send emails on behalf of their domain. DKIM uses cryptographic signatures to verify the authenticity of the sender.
For a server to know how to handle SPF and DKIM results, you have to include a DMARC policy in the DNS records. This policy specifies whether failing SPF and DKIM checks should result in the email being marked as spam or rejected outright.
When an email is received, the recipient‘s email server checks the sender’s DMARC policy. To do this, it queries the DNS records of the sender’s domain. It then performs SPF and DKIM checks on the incoming email based on the information provided in the DMARC policy.
If the email passes both SPF and DKIM checks according to the DMARC policy, it is considered authenticated and is delivered to the recipient’s inbox. That is what you want for your email marketing messages.
On the other hand, if the email fails either SPF or DKIM checks, the recipient’s email server follows the instructions in the DMARC policy. This could involve marking the email as spam, quarantining it, or rejecting it outright. This you should avoid by having a consistent DMARC policy and sound SPF and DKIM configurations.
Benefits of DMARC
If you already have SPF and DKIM configured in your DNS, why would you need a DMARC policy?
- To begin with, it provides a layer of control over email authentication failures, so it acts as a confirmation for your legitimate email.
- It also reduces the likelihood of email phishing attacks for users at large, which benefits all goodwill users of the Internet.
- And it enhances email deliverability by establishing a clear policy on unauthenticated emails.
All Together Now! The Synergy of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
While SPF, DKIM, and DMARC each offer valuable standalone benefits, their true power lies in their combined use. Deploying all three authentication protocols creates a robust shield against phishing attacks, email spoofing, and other fraudulent activities. It bolsters your email deliverability and establishes trust with both email providers and recipients.
Remember that, even if your servers are already configured with these protocols, you will still have to make changes to the DNS. This way our platform’s servers will be authenticated to send email on behalf of your domain. Don’t worry; we will be with you and it will be a piece of cake.
Implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is not just a technical necessity; it’s a strategic imperative for any organisation relying on email communication. By fortifying your email deliverability with these authentication protocols, you not only protect your brand’s reputation. You also foster trust with your audience in an era where email security is paramount.