Using a custom domain for email sending

If you're subscribed to the Growth, Plus, or Custom plan, you have access to the Custom domain feature, which allows you to send emails from your own purchased domain. This feature helps improve the deliverability of your emails and reduces the chance of them landing in spam folders. In this article, we'll explore strategies to enhance the impact of your email communications and improve deliverability.

By default, Growave uses noreply@socialshopwave.email to send notifications. However, if you're on a Growth, Premium, or Custom plan, you can personalize this with the custom email feature, which allows you to use your own domain for sending messages. This domain must be purchased and managed by you via a third-party provider.

DNS records and email reputation

To ensure your emails are recognized as legitimate and avoid being marked as spam, it’s critical to configure certain DNS records, such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Understanding these email authentication protocols can significantly improve your email strategy:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Prevents unauthorized servers from sending emails on behalf of your domain.
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds a digital signature to your emails, allowing recipients to verify they are authentic.
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): Specifies how receivers should handle unauthenticated emails and provides reports on your email traffic.

These protocols ensure that your emails are secure and reach their intended recipients.

Setting up AWS SES Custom MAIL FROM Domain

To protect your sender reputation and ensure optimal inbox delivery, it's essential to configure your AWS SES Custom MAIL FROM domain. This step is particularly important, as major inbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo require bulk senders to use a verified custom domain (DKIM, SPF, DMARC) instead of a "free email" address.

By setting up this feature, your emails will display the sender as "Mail From {your domain name}" rather than the default "Mail from Amazon SES."

To configure your Custom MAIL FROM domain, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Growave admin panel.
2. Navigate to Settings → General, find the Custom email domain section, and click the "Setup" button.

4. In the popup window, enter your email to send notifications from and click "Save".
5. You will receive a confirmation email from Amazon. Confirm your email to proceed.
6. Growave will generate the necessary records for your domain and display them in a new popup window.
7. Add the records to your hosting provider’s DNS settings.

This streamlined process ensures your emails are sent from a verified domain, improving deliverability and enhancing your brand's professionalism.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

SPF is an email authentication protocol that allows domain owners to specify which mail servers are authorized to send emails on behalf of their domain. This protocol helps ensure that emails originating from your domain are legitimate and authorized. Brands that use multiple email services must publish SPF records in their DNS settings to authorize the use of different sending servers.

In Growave, all platform emails are sent through Amazon SES. Therefore, it is crucial to add the following resource to your SPF record: include:amazonses.com.

For example, if your current SPF record looks like this:

v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all

With the inclusion of Amazon SES, the updated record would be:

v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:amazonses.com ~all

To ensure your SPF configuration is accurate, you can use tools like MXToolbox.

SPF plays a critical role in preventing email spoofing and phishing attacks by validating authorized mail servers. Adding trusted providers like Amazon SES to your SPF record improves your email deliverability and security.

However, SPF alone isn't enough for complete email authentication. For the best protection, it's important to set up DKIM and DMARC alongside SPF as part of a comprehensive email security strategy.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC)

DMARC is a protocol designed to help domain owners enhance the security of their email communications. It allows you to define policies for email authentication and specify the actions to be taken when an email fails to pass authentication checks.

DMARC policies can be configured with varying levels of enforcement:

• p=none (Monitoring Mode):

  In this mode, DMARC operates in an observation-only state. It collects detailed reports on email authentication results without affecting the actual delivery of emails. This is useful as a diagnostic tool to identify potential issues before applying stricter policies.

• p=quarantine (Quarantine Mode):

  When using the quarantine policy, emails that fail authentication may be delivered to the recipient’s spam or quarantine folder. This provides a middle ground between monitoring and outright rejection, allowing potentially problematic emails to be flagged without being immediately blocked.

• p=reject (Reject Mode):

  The reject policy is the strictest DMARC setting. It instructs email receivers to reject messages that fail authentication, preventing unauthorized or malicious emails from reaching the recipient's inbox.

For Growave users, the following DMARC record should be applied:

"v=DMARC1; p=none; sp=reject; pct=100;"

You can verify this record using DNS lookup tools, such as Dig, by entering the subdomain as _dmarc under the TXT section.

Key benefits of DMARC

DMARC helps you protect your email domain against phishing, spoofing, and other fraudulent activities. By using DMARC, you can balance between monitoring and enforcement, adjusting policies according to your security requirements.

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

DKIM is an email authentication protocol that allows an organization to verify its responsibility for transmitting an email. It achieves this by adding a digital signature to the email header, which mailbox providers can validate using cryptographic authentication.

In essence, DKIM enables the sender to take responsibility for a message while it's in transit, allowing the receiving server to evaluate the sender’s reputation and decide whether to deliver the message. This can improve deliverability and reduce the risk of malicious emails being accepted by the recipient.

See the Custom MAIL FROM domain section above to find DKIM records to be added to your domain.

Blacklist check

Even if your domain has properly configured DNS and DKIM records, your email address or domain may still be flagged on various email blacklists. This can significantly affect email deliverability, as blacklisted domains are often filtered out by email providers.

How to check if your domain is blacklisted

Tools like Mail Tester can help you quickly identify if your domain or IP address is listed on any blacklists:

• Send a test email from the address or domain you suspect may be blacklisted to the spam test tool’s designated address.
• After sending, visit the tool’s website and click the "Check your score" button to get your results.

How to resolve blacklisting

Understand the cause:

Listings may occur due to issues like spam complaints, sending to outdated email lists, or using disreputable email-sending practices.

Request delisting:

Most blacklists provide a method to request delisting once the root cause is resolved. This may involve filling out a form or providing evidence of corrective actions.

Improve email practices:

To prevent future blacklisting, ensure you're adhering to best practices, such as maintaining a clean email list, implementing SPF/DKIM/DMARC, and avoiding spammy content in your messages.

Email issues for BTinternet.com users

Some emails sent to BTinternet.com, btopenworld, and talk21 addresses may be marked as spam due to British Telecom's strict filters, despite Growave’s efforts to optimize SPF and DMARC records. As a result, emails may not always reach customers on these domains.

We are exploring alternatives, and emails sent via platforms like Klaviyo or Omnisend tend to have better delivery rates.

If you have any questions regarding this article or may need help, please feel free to contact us at support@growave.io or by chat icon in the bottom-right corner.