A shortcut method to improve your email delivery rates is by incorporating SPF and DKIM into your DNS settings. This conveys your subscribers that you have authorized MailGoes to send your campaigns on behalf of you. With this your email campaigns are in safe hands where your email campaigns will not get marked as spam as your email campaigns are sent from an IP address of MailGoes.

In this article we will discuss about the following:

• Authentication process of SPF and DKIM
• How to setup SPF and DKIM for your sending domains?
• How to validate SPF and DKIM for your sending domain?
• Verifying your sending domain
• DMARC

Let us start from the basics:

SPF: Sender Policy Framework, where it is a DNS entry with a list of servers that should be allowed to send email from a specific domain.

DKIM: Domain Keys Identified Mail, it is considered as a method to verify the content are trustworthy, in the sense they were not changed from the moment they left from the initial email server.

Authentication process of SPF and DKIM
Authentication is a process by which a system wants to prove its legitimacy by identifying the user who wishes to access it. The access control is normally based on the identity of the user who wishes to access it. It is a process to prove that the sender is not a fraudulent one.

MailGoes does this with the help of adding new DNS records either to our domain or your domain which automatically authenticates all emails sent through the server.

This authentication helps to maintain your legitimacy and helps in controlling spam emails. This process would not allow others to use your name and brand for a fraudulent purpose.

There are many processes like this but the SPF and Sender ID are considered to be the powerful authentication tools where it allows the domain user to add record so that the recipient can also check for its legitimacy. These are easy to implement but DKIM and Domain Keys are considered to be secure when compared to SPF and Sender IP.

MailGoes recommends to add SPF and DKIM to your domain so that you can authenticate your domain while improving domain reputation.

One of the most important benefits of authentication process is that it helps ISPs to track sender reputation. The sender reputation of ISP is influenced by your domain and the emails sent on your behalf. This allows you to have control over your emails that affects deliverability rates and positive deliverability rates increases trust and reputation score.

How to setup SPF and DKIM for your sending domains?
When you are successful in adding a new sending domain then you can add appropriate records to your DNS record. In order to add SPF and DKIM records, you should add type "TXT" through your DNS provider. Take a professional help in adding such records.

SPF: If you are aware of the SPF record, it is better to add one for your domain. If you are sending emails through domain.com then it should like this:

v=spf1 include: spf.domain.com ?all

If you already have a TXT record then you can exclude ?all

DKIM: Add TXT record key1._domainkey.domain.com, replace the domain.com with the domain you like to set up.

There are two options available for this, some DNS providers escape semicolons and some use semicolons.

How to validate SPF and DKIM for your sending domain?
You should validate your SPF and DKIM records of your sending domain with your MailGoes account before MailGoes tend to validate your domain.

For doing so, follow this procedure:

• Go to your MailGoes account.
• In menu, access Authentication -> SPF Configuration. This gives complete information about adding SPF records.
• In order to add sending domain, select menu item Manage Domains. Add a new domain here and proceed for next steps for validating SPF and DKIM directly from the same page.
• After this procedure is complete, it takes about 24 hrs for DNS propagation changes. If there are any errors then you can check the error details in your MailGoes account. You can also use a third party concern to check your records.

DMARC: Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance, is an email authentication procedure where it is uses a deployed SPF and DKIM protocol that adds a reporting function allowing senders and receivers to improve and monitor protection of their domain from spam. We describe more about this in another article.