What is email authentication?

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication are email standards that help get your emails delivered to your subscribers' inboxes. Each provides a method to communicate to receiving email servers that your emails are authorized by your brand and are not malicious. We highly recommend setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication early to avoid any potential deliverability issues that may arise.

Why should I care about authenticating my emails?

The system will not prevent you from sending your campaign if authentication methods are not properly setup. However, your ability to get emails into your recipients' inboxes may be impacted because these records are checked by receiving servers to validate the email sender. We strongly recommend implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to help you get more emails into recipients' inboxes & reduce the number of contacts get moved into 'Held'.

Additionally, many ISPs and email clients are now enforcing email authentication methods when processing emails to determine if the email should be delivered, or not.

Authentication indicators in-app

You will notice email domain authentication indicators next to your “Sender Name and Address” line on the Setup screen of the create-a-campaign workflow. These indicate whether SPF, DKIM, or DMARC are published for the email domain.

If you don't have these authentication methods setup, you will see failed (yellow/red) indicators. Ideally, you want all of these indicators to be green. In the screenshot below, you will see three passing authentication indicators:

Setup instructions for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

Getting Help

While much of email authentication setup is completed on the customer side, if you need help or have additional questions about authentication, email our Support team.