Optimizing Your Email Deliverability with SPF, DKIM and DMARC
Verify yourself as a secure sender with DMARC, SPF and DKIM to maximize the deliverability of your newsletters.
Want to make sure your newsletters get into your recipients’ inboxes and don’t end up in the spam folder? Then you’ve got to know three important terms in email marketing: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. No need to stress. Even if that sounds a bit technical, we’ll break it down in a way that’s easy to understand.
💡 Here’s a quick rundown
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are technical processes for email authentication. They are essential for email marketers. DKIM is a clear “must.” Many mailbox providers make DKIM mandatory for frequent senders.
The three methods work like digital ID cards. They confirm two things: first, the authenticity of your emails—they actually come from you—and second, the integrity of your emails—nothing has been changed during the sending process. This tells the mail servers of the people who get your newsletter to deliver your emails to them.
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are super important if you want to maximize your deliverability. But how exactly do these processes work? This article’s got you covered.
Contents
What Is Email Deliverability and Why Does It Matter?
Basically, email deliverability means the likelihood of your email landing in the inbox instead of the spam folder or getting blocked.
The success of your message depends on a few things:
- Reputation of the sending domain. This is how trustworthy your sender address is.
- User interactions (e.g., opens, clicks, and unsubscribes)
- technical security measures like SPF, DKIM and DMARC
Deliverability is key to successful email marketing. The better it is, the better your email marketing campaigns will perform.
What’s a Good Delivery Rate?
A good delivery rate is above 89%. Anything below this indicates the need for optimization. Reasons include a poor sender reputation and a lack of authentication measures. It is essential to continuously monitor the delivery rate and take decisive action to improve it if necessary.
How to Improve Delivery Rates
There are three things you can do:
- Organizational: Keep the recipient list “clean” because user interactions can affect delivery rates and the reputation of the sending domain. This means that your recipients are active, open your emails, and click on your links. Try to get inactive recipients to open again with a reengagement campaigns. If that doesn’t work, let them go.
- Content: Some email clients get really picky about spam. If there are too many special characters or too many images, they’ll flag it as spam. This can lead to a lower delivery rate. Check out our blog post for more tips: “Take These Anti-Spam Step to Dodge the Junk Folder“.
- Technical: Nutzen Sie SPF, DKIM und DMARC, um Ihre E-Mails als echt zu kennzeichnen. Damit zeigen Sie den Servern der Empfänger: „Diese Nachricht ist vertrauenswürdig – bitte zustellen!“
Simply Explained: Improving Deliverability with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
Don’t let the abbreviations intimidate you. We will break them down for you, step-by-step, using clear examples. You can set up all three procedures in the DNS settings of your domain. For example, you can use IONOS, Strato, or another hosting provider.
DNS is like the Internet’s address book. This is where you specify who is allowed to send emails from your domain. This means that email servers won’t flag your messages as suspicious and send them straight to the people you’re sending them to. At the same time, it gets harder for scammers to pretend to be you and send phony emails. This not only improves your delivery rate, but it also helps strengthen the trust of your recipients in the authenticity and reliability of your messages.
SPF: Who Is Allowed to Send Emails in Your Name?
If you use a newsletter tool like CleverReach, the technical sender of your email will not match the visible sender. In this case, the technical sender is our CleverReach server and the visible sender is your company name. These two different details make it hard for recipient email servers to tell if a message is real. SPF helps ensure that our server is allowed to send emails on behalf of your domain. This makes it less likely that your emails will be marked as spam.
Technical functionality: To use SPF, you need to add a record to your domain’s DNS settings. This determines which computers or IP addresses can send emails on your domain. When an email is received, the server checks the DNS to find the SPF record for the sending domain. Then, it compares the sending IP address with the addresses listed in the corresponding record. If the IP address matches, the email is considered authenticated.
💡 In simple words: Picture this: you send a letter and say it’s from your company. SPF is like a list of approved delivery people who are permitted to deliver mail on behalf of your company. If the delivery person isn’t on the list, the letter is considered suspicious.
Setup guide: SPF record for CleverReach
DKIM: The Digital Letter Seal
DKIM is now required by many mailbox providers for frequent senders.
Technical functionality: The newsletter software used, like CleverReach, generates a public key and a private key for this authentication process. The two keys only work together. This is also called “asymmetric authentication.”
The public key is added to the DNS of the sender domain. The private key is used to generate an encrypted signature for each email. When an email arrives at the receiving server, it can check the private signature in the email with the public key added to the DNS settings of the sending domain.
If the signature is correct, it means that the message hasn’t been altered on its way to the recipient and actually originates from the specified sender. This verification stops scammers from sending fake emails pretending to be a reliable domain.
💡 In simple words: DKIM works like a sealed envelope. The seal makes sure that the contents haven’t been tampered with on the way and that the sender is who they say they are. DKIM works the same way, but digitally.
Setup guide: Setting up DKIM in CleverReach
DMARC: Rules for Suspicious Emails
Technical funcationality: DNS records are also used here, in this case to define the guidelines for dealing with unauthenticated emails. These guidelines help the receiving servers figure out if an email should be deleted, moved to the spam folder, or rejected. Also, you can send reports to the domain owner. This allows you to see who’s sending emails on your behalf, which is handy for catching abuse.
Additional Technical Steps to Improve Delivery Rates
There are other technical solutions out there that can help improve your email deliverability, in addition to DMARC, DKIM, and SPF. This includes using a separate subdomain with SSL encryption, setting up CNAME records correctly, and setting up BIMI to make your recipients trust you more.
Subdomain with SSL Encryption
We suggest using a different subdomain for each type of email, like a newsletter or a transactional email. For example: newsletter.mybusiness.com.
The reason for this is simple: email servers check each subdomain separately and each one has its own reputation. If the main domain is used for sending newsletters and loses its reputation, it can have a bad effect on all the business email traffic. The result is obvious: important messages end up in spam. Subdomains are the best way to minimize such risks.
Get an SSL certificate (Secure Sockets Layer) for your domain to protect your email communication. You can get an SSL certificate from your domain provider.
SSL encryption is the key to keeping your data safe from unauthorized access during transmission. This ensures that third parties can’t manipulate the content or intercept confidential information.
CNAME Records for Improved Email Deliverability
CNAME records are a crucial yet often overlooked factor in ensuring email deliverability. A CNAME (canonical name) is a type of DNS record that refers one domain or subdomain to another. This is especially useful if you use an external email marketing provider such as CleverReach for sending emails. You give us a subdomain using a CNAME record. You can use this for click links in the campaign, for reporting, and for the online version.
The CNAME record makes sure that your emails are checked by the service provider’s servers, but they still appear as if they came from your own domain. This helps keep your brand’s image intact while lowering the chance of spam or phishing warnings.
Use Bimi to Make Newsletters Look Trustworthy
BIMI, or Brand Indicators for Message Identification, is a visual way to boost people’s trust in your sender address.
With BIMI, your brand logo shows up right in the recipients’ inboxes. Recipients can easily tell that your message is real because fake messages usually don’t have an official logo.
DMARC has to be set up properly to use BIMI. Also, the added logo needs a special security certificate (VMC—Verified Mark Certificate) to confirm that your logo belongs to your company. This measure strengthens your brand’s presence, increases open rates, and provides an extra layer of protection for your email traffic, on top of email authentication.
Effective Email Security and Optimal Deliverability
DMARC, DKIM and SPF might seem like added work at first, but they’re definitely worth the effort! These electronic letter seals are like a digital safety net for your email communication. They prevent scammers from misusing your domain and ensure that your messages are recognized as trustworthy.
Once you’ve got these authentication methods set up right, you’ll be all set. Your emails will land right in the inboxes of the people you’re sending them to.
Technical measures are, however, insufficient on their own. A well-maintained recipient list, regular reviews of your email strategy, and high-quality content are essential for a high delivery rate. It’s definitely worth it: Your emails are not only more reliably delivered, but they’re also seen more positively.
Rely on CleverReach as a CSA-certified provider
CleverReach is certified by the CSA (Certified Senders Alliance) – a sign of the highest standards in the email marketing industry. This certification confirms that we fulfil strict criteria in terms of security and deliverability.
