Frequently Asked Questions

What is a MAIL FROM Domain?

When sending an email, there are two addresses that reveal its source:

1. a FROM address, visible to the recipient
2. a MAIL FROM address denoting the message's source

Often referred to as the envelope sender, envelope from, bounce address, or Return Path address, the MAIL FROM address is utilized by mail servers for returning bounce messages and error notifications. Typically, recipients will only see the MAIL FROM address if they check the email's source code.

By default, Mail Designer 365 Campaigns automatically assigns a MAIL FROM domain to the emails you send, unless you opt for a custom domain.

This FAQ outlines the advantages of configuring a personalized MAIL FROM domain, as well as how to get set up.

When do I need a MAIL FROM Domain?

When you use Mail Designer 365 Campaigns for sending emails, the default MAIL FROM domain automatically uses a subdomain of Mail Designer 365 Campaigns (sentwith.maildesigner365.com). In this case, Sender Policy Framework (SPF) authentication effectively validates these messages since the default MAIL FROM domain aligns with the Mail Designer – i.e. the application responsible for sending the email.

However, if you would prefer not to use Mail Designer 365 Campaigns' default MAIL FROM domain, and instead wish to opt for a personalized subdomain under your own domain, this is known as utilizing a custom MAIL FROM domain within Mail Designer 365 Campaigns.

In short, using a custom MAIL FROM domain allows you to gain the flexibility to utilize SPF, DKIM, or both for attaining Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) validation.

DMARC empowers a sender's domain to signal that emails dispatched from the domain are safeguarded by one or more authentication systems. DMARC validation can be achieved through SPF compliance, DKIM compliance, or both methods.

Requirements for a custom MAIL FROM domain

When setting your own MAIL FROM domain, the following requirements must be met:

• Must be a subdomain of the parent domain of a verified email address or domain
• Should not be the same as a subdomain that you are using to send email from
• Should not be the same as a subdomain that you are using to receive email

How to set up a custom MAIL FROM domain in Mail Designer 365 Campaigns

In order to set up a custom MAIL FROM domain, you'll need to add records to the DNS configuration for the domain.

Mail Designer 365 Campaigns requires users to publish an MX record so that your domain can receive the bounce and complaint notifications sent to you by email providers. You will also have to publish an SPF (type TXT) record to show that Mail Designer 365 is authorized to send emails from your domain.

1. Log in to your my.maildesigner365 account and go to From:addresses > Domain Verification
2. Locate your domain in the list and click on the tab MAILFROM:






3. You will now see and be able to copy the text for the new MX record you need to add to your domain's DNS record

Tip: Unsure on how to edit your DNS record? Mail Designer 365 Campaigns automatically detects your domain's DNS provider and links you to a provider-specific guide:

Please note once you are done, it could take up to 48 hours to update your settings, depending on your DNS provider.

The green checkmark will indicate when the setup is complete:

Mail Designer Link Rescue provides you with a convenient solution for editing links, even after your email has already been sent.

When would I need to edit links post sending?

• You accidentally entered the wrong link
• You forgot to change a link because you duplicated a design
• You want to change a link because the old URL no longer exists (e.g. a limited time offer or live stream)

How to change a link in an email after sending

Mail Designer 365 Delivery Hub users can use Link Rescue to easily change email newsletter links after a campaign has been delivered.

To get started, open the Analytics view for your chosen campaign and switch to the Link Overview tab:

Here you can select any link and edit it at any time. Once you have replaced any given link, click Save to update the change for all recipients – including those who have already opened the email!

Your changes will be synced immediately, giving you ultimate peace of mind.

Important:
Mail Designer 365 Link Rescue is available to Mail Designer Campaigns users with a Seoul plan or higher. View all plan tiers here →

The Anatomy of an Email

Before diving into DKIM, let's briefly understand how emails work. When you send an email, it's like sending a digital letter. It travels through various servers and networks before reaching its intended recipient. Each server it passes through can potentially be a point of vulnerability where malicious actors might tamper with the email's content or disguise themselves as legitimate senders.

Enter DKIM: The Email's Digital Signature

DKIM, which stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail, is a security protocol designed to verify the authenticity and integrity of an email message. It does this by adding a digital signature to the email before it leaves the sender's server. This signature is like a seal of approval, assuring the recipient that the email has not been tampered with and genuinely comes from the claimed sender.

How DKIM Works

DKIM relies on a pair of cryptographic keys: a private key kept by the sender and a public key published in the sender's DNS (Domain Name System) records. Here's how it works:

1. Email Signing: When an email is sent, the sending server uses the sender's private key to generate a unique digital signature based on the email's content. This signature is added to the email's header.
2. Recipient Verification: Upon receiving the email, the recipient's email server retrieves the public key associated with the sender's domain from the DNS records.
3. Signature Verification: The recipient's server uses this public key to verify the email's digital signature. If the signature matches the email's content and has not been altered in transit, the email is considered authentic.
4. Filtering and Delivery: If the email passes DKIM verification, it's more likely to be delivered to the recipient's inbox. If not, it may be flagged as suspicious or sent to the spam folder.

The Importance of DKIM

1. Protection Against Spoofing: One of the most significant benefits of DKIM is its ability to prevent email spoofing. Without DKIM, cybercriminals can easily forge email headers and pretend to be someone they're not. DKIM ensures that the email you receive from a trusted sender is indeed from that sender.
2. Email Integrity: DKIM safeguards the integrity of your emails. It guarantees that your message hasn't been altered during transit, ensuring that the recipient receives the content exactly as you intended.
3. Enhanced Deliverability: When your emails are DKIM-signed, email providers are more likely to trust them. This means your legitimate emails have a better chance of landing in your recipients' inboxes rather than getting lost in spam folders.
4. Reduced Phishing: By reducing the effectiveness of phishing attacks, DKIM helps protect individuals and organizations from falling victim to scams that could result in data breaches or financial losses.

Conclusion

In an era where email fraud and phishing attacks are prevalent, DKIM serves as a crucial line of defense. It's like a digital fingerprint that assures the authenticity and integrity of your emails. While it may operate behind the scenes and go unnoticed by most email users, DKIM is a vital tool in the ongoing battle against cyber threats. Its use should be encouraged and embraced by individuals, businesses, and email service providers to create a safer digital communication environment for everyone. So, the next time you receive an email, remember that DKIM might be silently working to protect you from potential harm in the vast digital landscape.

So you've sent out your email campaign and now want to see how well it has performed – no problem! Mail Designer Delivery Hub offers you a detailed performance report for all your sent campaigns.

How it works

You can access performance reports for any given campaign under https://my.maildesigner365.com/team/deliveries/campaigns/finished.

Find your chosen campaign and click the statistic icon to open its performance report:

During the delivery
As soon as an email campaign is sent, you can use Delivery Hub's live reporting tools to track the progress of your newsletter in real time. This includes email deliveries, bounces, and opens.

The numbers in the overview will be updated live as your email is delivered to your target group.

After the delivery
Once delivery has completed, you can view an overview of all campaign statistics.

Tip: For best results, we recommend carrying out your final analysis from 24 hours after delivery. This helps ensure all recipients have had time to read and interact with your campaign.

Interpreting email metrics

The performance report covers a wide range of analytics data which aim to help you better understand how your campaign did and what you can improve on next time.

Here is a breakdown of the most important email metrics, what they represent and some current industry benchmarks:

• Open Rate: The number of times your email was opened compared to the amount of successful deliveries. The benchmark for this can vary depending on industry but anything above 25% can be considered a good result
• Click-Through Rate: The number of email link clicks compared to the number of successful deliveries. This value is often quite low, with an average of around 2-3% across all industries
• Click-To-Open Rate: The number of email link clicks compared to the number of email opens. This helps you understand how your email content resonated with readers. A good benchmark to aim for here is 10%
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of emails which were not successfully delivered to the recipient – e.g. because the email address is incorrect or inactive. Here, the lower the number, the better. Anything above 3-5% should be cause for concern.
• Unsubscribe Rate: The percentage of recipients who unsubscribed from your email list after receiving this email. Again, you want this number to be as low as possible – ideally 0! However, anything under 0.5% can be considered a good result.
  Tip: If you are noticing higher unsubscribe rates, you should take a look at the type of content you are sending, the frequency of your emails, and also consider segmenting your audience appropriately

Other useful statistics
These metrics are also worth a mention and shouldn't be overlooked in your email analysis:

• Complained Rate: This calculates the number of recipients who marked your email as spam. This is never a good sign and if you notice your emails being marked as spam, check out this post for our tips →
• Rejected Rate: This calculates the number of times your email was rejected by an email provider (e.g. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc.) and can indicator for a more serious issue. If your emails are being rejected, please ensure you are sending from a verified email domain. More information →

No, we are unable to verify domains from public email providers such as Gmail or Yahoo, as these domains are not unique to individual users or organizations. For verification purposes, we recommend using a custom domain associated with a specific organization or business.

To send your first email campaign, you first need to set up your email address and domain, so it's ok for Mail Designer 365 Delivery Hub to send emails on your behalf.

There are a few technical steps involved during setup. These steps are crucial, as leading email service providers will check that DKIM, SPF and DMARC authentication are configured in order to prevent spam.

Rest assured we've done all we can to make the setup process as simple and fuss free as possible for you. We recommend that you add all three methods to your domain so that your emails reach all recipients. If you require assistance at any point, reach out to your IT admin or get in touch with our support team.

Ready? Let's get started!

Step 1: Add and Verify your Email Address

Before you start, make sure that you have already set up a Mail Designer team. (If you have not done so already, check out our easy team setup guide).

• Go to Settings > "From: addresses"
• Under "From: addresses for Campaigns", add a new sender by entering the "From Name" and email address your campaign will be sent from




• You'll now receive a verification email. Click the link to confirm you own the email address:

Step 2: To avoid to get marked as spam: Set up DKIM

For this you'll need to create a DNS entry for DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) (more details about DKIM and why it's essential. You should definitely set up DKIM if you want to avoid your mailings ending up in the spam folder.

• Stay in "From: addresses" and scroll down to "Domain verification". You will now see the domain for the email address you just set up
• Now it's time to determine the DNS provider for your domain. Most likely, our system has already identified the provider and displayed it as a "Potential Provider," along with a link to the provider's guide. Tip: We've also compiled a list of links to setup guides for common providers in this article.
• Click on the "DKIM" icon in the "Domain verified" column:




• A DKIM record will be generated for your domain, along with the necessary type, name, and value of the record. Please use the exact information shown to set up the DNS record (including any special characters such as " or . ).




• Depending on your DNS provider, it may take up to 48 hours for the changes to propagate. Delivery Hub will periodically perform automatic checks. Alternatively, click the refresh icon to update results in real time:




• Once you've completed the setup, and the verification is successful, you'll see a green checkmark next to the DKIM icon:

Step 3: To avoid to get marked as spam: Set up SPF

Now, let's ensure your emails are properly authenticated with SPF (Sender Policy Framework), which prevents email spoofing (more details on SPF).

• Go back to your domain under "Domain Verification" and click "SPF":




• Next, go to your DNS provider and create an SPF record for your domain. The exact steps vary depending on your provider, so follow their guidelines.
• Note: If you or your company have already created an SPF record, our system will try to include the required part and display the full record value respecting your previous content. If you feel confident and know what you are doing, you can also manually edit your existing record and add the following part: include: spf.welovemails.com.
• Once the verification has successfully completed, you'll see a green checkmark next to the SPF icon:

Step 4: Set up DMARC

Although not mandatory, setting up DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is recommended to add an extra layer of security to your emails (more details on DMARC).

• Click on the "DMARC" icon under "Domain Verification":




• Then, create a DMARC DNS record for your domain
• Feel free to use the suggested record, or your own values. If you're unsure, check your organization's policies or ask your IT team
• Just like with SPF and DKIM, once the DMARC verification has successfully completed, you'll see a green checkmark next to the DMARC icon:

Congratulations! You've now set up and verified your from address and can start sending email campaigns to your audience.

Mail Designer Campaigns automatically replaces free email addresses like Gmail or Mac.com with a modified format to prevent emails from going directly to spam. For example, an email address such as address@gmail.com would be converted to address.gmail.com@sentwithmaildesigner365.com. This replacement ensures that your emails are not flagged by recipient mail servers, as using free email addresses like Gmail or Mac.com directly would likely result in your emails being sent to spam.

To improve deliverability and maintain a professional image, it's recommended to use a custom domain email address (e.g., yourname@yourcompany.com) that matches the domain of your business. This not only avoids the replacement issue but also ensures proper authentication with protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, which helps prevent your emails from being marked as spam or rejected by recipient mail servers.

It is possible to send campaigns from Gmail or Mac.com addresses using Mail Designer 365 Campaigns; however, there is a higher likelihood that your email will be marked as spam compared to sending campaigns from your own domain. Therefore, it is advisable to use a custom email address to improve deliverability and reduce the risk of spam markings.

Scenario: Suppose we run a jeans shop that offers three different fashion newsletters: one for women, one for men and one for children's fashion. The shop already has lists of email addresses for the respective groups.

What is the best way to import these email lists into Mail Designer Campaigns in order to send newsletters to them?

1. Add new email contacts

Add contacts in Mail Designer Campaigns:
https://my.maildesigner365.com/team/deliveries/addContacts

Email addresses can be added via copy and paste or via CSV file.

Add contacts via copy and paste

Insert your email addresses into the field separated by a comma or return. To start with, we are only using the newsletter addresses for the “Women” newsletter.

Then select below:
"Enter or select new attribute"

Now you can assign an attribute name.
What are attributes? Attributes are used so that we can later filter contacts according to their characteristics - for example, if we want to identify all contacts who are interested in women's fashion. Attributes can be understood like columns in an Excel table.

In this example, we will call the attribute “Newsletter Type”. The new attribute is then created by clicking on “New attribute + Newsletter Type”.

We can now assign an attribute value: “Women”.

Click on "Click to create the new value Women..."

Finally, click on “+ Add Contacts” to import all contacts and assign them the attribute value “Women”. This way, we can later see that these contacts are interested in women's fashion.

Add more contacts

We can now repeat the entire process for the “Men” and “Children” newsletters. Use the “Newsletter Type” attribute we created in the previous step, but this time use the attribute values “Men” and “Children”.

Important information:

• If an email address already exists in your saved contacts, it will not be re-imported, but the attribute and the attribute value will still be added. This means you can safely add email addresses again and again without ending up with duplicates in your list.
• An attribute can have multiple attribute values.
  Example: Grace Müller with the email address mueller@example.com is interested in both women's and children's fashion and therefore appears on both lists. If you import the contact once with the attribute "Newsletter Type" and the value "Women" and then again with the attribute "Newsletter Type" and the value "Children", both attribute values will appear in your search results:
  

We have now finished importing our contacts and can proceed to create target groups in the next step.

2. Create target groups

Once you've added contacts and assigned attributes to them, you can create your first audiences. These are the email lists (or target groups) your newsletters will later be sent to.

Audiences can be created at: https://my.maildesigner365.com/team/deliveries/targetgroups

Creating a new audience

We will start off with the newsletter for women's fashion. Create a new audience and give it a name (i.e. "Women".)

Now, select the attribute (i.e. “Newsletter Type”) that you created during the contact import from the menu.

Next, select the corresponding value (e.g. "Women"):

Now all contacts with the attribute value "Newsletter Type = Women" will be displayed below. Click to save your new audience.

Create additional audiences

These steps can also be carried out for the “Men” and “Children” lists by selecting the appropriate attribute values.

Good to know:

• Mail Designer audiences are dynamic. This means that if you add new contacts later on, they will automatically be added to the appropriate audience, provided the same attribute value was assigned during import.

3. Sending newsletters

We refer to each sent newsletter as an individual campaign. This means that there is one campaign per target group.

Have you created your email template for the women's fashion campaign on your Mac in Mail Designer 365? Excellent! Click Start Campaign to get started.

Plan a campaign

When you prepare a new campaign, the subject line and sender address fields are automatically filled out for you. Assuming you don't want to change anything here, you can immediately go to "Who?" and select your audience.

Here you can choose the audience (i.e. “women”) that we created in the last step:

Choose a time for delivery or click on "Now" to send the email right away. Afterwards, you can check over your email one last time by selecting "Queue this email for delivery".

You are now ready to send!

Ready for the next one? Repeat these steps for any additional newsletters and their respective email lists.

Want to offer your customers an easy way to subscribe to your email newsletters?

Mail Designer Delivery Hub can be conveniently connected to your website, offering your website visitors a direct way to sign up to your email list. Here's how it works!

Create a signup form

The signup form builder in Delivery Hub is easy to use and a great way to grow your email list.

Good to know: Signup forms are available in all Mail Designer 365 Campaigns plans. The number of forms you can create depends on your plan tier.

Setting up your form

To get started, go to https://my.maildesigner365.com/team/deliveries/signupForms to set up your new sign up form.

You can begin by giving your form a name, e.g. Website Signups. This helps you identify where the contacts came from and is not visible to customers.

Additionally, you can add a catchy title which will be visible on your site.

Form fields

The next step is setting up the fields of your form. This is an important step, as it determines how contacts will be categorized later in Delivery Hub.

First and last name
You have the option to allow subscribers to enter a first and last name into your form. This can be helpful if you wish to send personalized emails, but also adds an extra step to the signup process.

Automatic attributes
These attributes will be automatically assigned to new contacts who sign up via this form. Subscribers will not be able to see the attribute name when they sign up.

Choose an existing attribute from the list or enter a new one, for example "Source", then click "Create new attribute...":

Following this, enter an attribute value. For example, "Website", then click "Click to create new value...":

New signups via this form will now be automatically assigned this attribute, meaning you can see how many contacts came via your website and even create tailored content for them.

Customer attributes
In many cases, it's helpful for customers to self assign attributes to help show you what type of content they are interested in.

Let's say you are a clothing store and regularly create newsletters with news and offers on women's, children's and men's fashion. You can include these as options in your signup form to let your subscribers determine which newsletters they want to receive.

This is a great way to make sure your email content stays relevant and reduces the risk of contacts unsubscribing later.

Again, you can choose an existing attribute from your list, or enter a new one as described in the previous step. Here, we are using the attribute "Newsletter Type" with the values "Women", "Children", and "Men". These will be the options your website visitors can choose from.

As soon as you've specified these attributes, you can also customize how they are displayed to users.

Check the box "Show Attribute Label" to enter a text which best describes the choices shown to users – e.g. "I'm interested in offers for"

You can now choose a display type. In most cases, "Checkbox" makes sense, i.e. if you want to offer multi selection. However, if users should only choose one option (e.g. location) or can input their own values (e.g. birthday), you can select the appropriate option from the dropdown menu.

Finally, you can enter a custom button text for your signup form in the field provided:

Double Opt-In

A double opt-in email is essential for all new sign ups, as it helps ensure your newly obtained email addresses are genuine – a good measure for preventing email bounces later on. Therefore we recommend keeping this option active.

The Delivery Hub signup form generator allows you to customize your double opt-in emails. Fill out the fields for email subject line, body text, and button.

In this section, you can also specify a custom landing page (e.g. a thank you page) for new subscribers.

Layout & Preview

In the final setup step, you can choose between different layout options for your signup form. For example, light or dark design.

To preview a design option, select your design settings, then click the refresh icon to see the latest version of your form. This also includes a preview of all the form fields selected in the previous step:

Once you're happy with the design, remember to save the form by clicking "Save Form":

Adding a signup form to your website

Adding your finished form to your website is super easy, thanks to Delivery Hub's code generator.

1. Click on "Generate code" to create the code needed for your form
2. Click "Copy code" to copy the form code to your clipboard

You can then paste this code into the desired area of your website and start collecting new subscribers!

Your next step - creating an audience

If you have not done so already, now is a good time to set up your email list(s). We call these audiences.

You can base your audiences on certain criteria, known as attributes, i.e. the attributes you specified in your signup form. For example, our clothing store needs at least three audiences for their newsletters: for women's, children's, and men's fashion.

Audiences can be created at: https://my.maildesigner365.com/team/deliveries/targetgroups

Creating a new audience

We will start off with the newsletter for women's fashion. Create a new audience and give it a name (i.e. "Women".)

Now, select the attribute (i.e. “Newsletter Type”) that you created during form setup.

Next, select the corresponding value (e.g. "Women"):

Now all contacts with the attribute value "Newsletter Type = Women" will be displayed below. Click to save your new audience.

Create additional audiences

These steps can also be carried out for the “Men” and “Children” lists by selecting the appropriate attribute values, providing you with dynamic audiences for each newsletter type.

Whenever a subscriber signs up via your website form, they will be automatically added to the respective audience(s) based on the categories they select.

If you want to create one audience with all your website signups, follow the steps above using the attribute and value that you specified during form setup, i.e. "Source" and "Website". All new subscribers will be automatically added to this list – even if they don't select one of your optional fields.

If some emails from your campaign ended up in the spam folder, there are several steps you can take to address the issue and improve future deliverability:

1. Set Up a New Email List: Create a new email list with recipients who did not open your original email. Resend the email to this group after a short delay, ideally with a different subject line or slight modifications to the content. This can help re-engage those who may have missed the first message.


2. Review Email Content: Analyze the content of the emails that went to spam. Look for elements that could trigger spam filters, such as excessive use of images, spammy keywords, or poor formatting, and make necessary adjustments.


3. Engage with Your Audience: Foster a positive relationship with your recipients by providing valuable content and encouraging interaction. Engaged recipients are less likely to mark your emails as spam.

No SPF/DKIM Protection: Public email domains do not allow custom authentication protocols like SPF and DKIM to be set up, increasing the likelihood of emails being marked as spam.

Gmail's Terms: Gmail does not permit mass emails to be sent through third-party services, which often leads to automatic spam detection.

Lower Deliverability: Emails from public providers like Gmail often end up in spam folders, as many email providers consider these addresses less secure.

Limited Brand Perception: A Gmail address appears less professional, which can undermine trust in the credibility of the business.

Email has become an integral part of our daily communication, from personal conversations to business dealings. However, with this convenience comes the constant threat of email-based fraud and phishing attacks. To combat these threats and ensure the authenticity of your emails, there's a simple yet crucial tool known as SPF or Sender Policy Framework.

The Vulnerabilities in Email Communication

Understanding SPF requires a brief insight into how email communication functions. When you send an email, it travels through multiple servers and networks before reaching its intended recipient. At each stop, malicious actors can potentially intercept, modify, or impersonate the email.

SPF: The Guardian of Email Authenticity

SPF, which stands for Sender Policy Framework, is a security protocol that acts as a guardian, protecting your email domain from being used by cybercriminals to impersonate you. SPF helps verify the legitimacy of incoming emails by checking if they originate from authorized servers associated with the sender's domain.

How SPF Works

SPF is relatively straightforward in its operation:

1. Sender Declaration: The domain owner (you or your organization) publishes a DNS record specifying which servers are authorized to send emails on its behalf. This record is known as the SPF record.
2. Email Reception: When an email is received by the recipient's email server, the server checks the SPF record of the sender's domain to see if the server that sent the email is authorized to do so.
3. Validation: If the sending server's IP address matches one of the authorized IP addresses listed in the SPF record, the email is considered legitimate and is accepted for delivery. If not, it may be flagged as suspicious or rejected.

The Significance of SPF

1. Protection Against Spoofing: SPF plays a crucial role in preventing email spoofing. It ensures that emails claiming to be from your domain indeed originate from authorized servers, making it harder for cybercriminals to impersonate you.
2. Enhanced Email Deliverability: When you implement SPF, email providers are more likely to trust your emails, leading to better deliverability rates. Your legitimate emails are less likely to end up in spam folders.
3. Reduction in Phishing: By making it more difficult for cybercriminals to impersonate trusted senders, SPF contributes to reducing phishing attacks, protecting individuals and organizations from potential harm.
4. Branding and Reputation: SPF helps maintain your email domain's reputation. It assures recipients that your emails are legitimate, strengthening trust in your brand or organization.

Conclusion

In an age where email is a primary mode of communication and email-based threats are prevalent, SPF serves as a reliable shield against impersonation and fraud. Although it may work silently behind the scenes, SPF is a powerful tool in the fight against cyber threats. Its implementation is highly recommended for individuals, businesses, and email service providers alike to bolster the security of email communications. So, the next time you send or receive an email, remember that SPF is working diligently to protect you from potential email impersonation in the vast digital landscape.

Email is the lifeblood of modern communication, but its ubiquity also makes it a prime target for cybercriminals seeking to deceive, defraud, or disrupt. To safeguard against these threats and ensure the integrity of your email communications, there's a powerful tool known as DMARC, or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance.

The Challenge of Email Impersonation

Before we dive into DMARC, it's essential to understand the challenges of email communication. Emails pass through multiple servers and networks on their way to the recipient, creating numerous opportunities for malicious actors to tamper with or impersonate senders.

DMARC: Your Email Security Guardian

DMARC, which stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance, is a comprehensive email authentication protocol designed to combat email impersonation, phishing attacks, and other email-based fraud.

How DMARC Works

DMARC builds on the foundations of SPF and DKIM but takes email authentication to a whole new level:

1. Policy Declaration: The domain owner (the sender) publishes a DNS record that specifies how email from their domain should be handled if it fails SPF or DKIM checks. This DNS record contains DMARC policy settings.
2. Email Reception: When an email is received by the recipient's email server, it performs SPF and DKIM checks as usual. If these checks fail, the server consults the sender's DMARC record.
3. DMARC Verification: DMARC instructs the recipient's server on how to handle emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks. The sender can choose to monitor these failures, quarantine suspicious emails, or reject them outright.
4. Reporting: DMARC provides valuable feedback by generating reports about email authentication activity. These reports help domain owners monitor and improve their email security.

The Significance of DMARC

1. Protection from Impersonation: DMARC is a formidable defense against email impersonation. It ensures that emails claiming to be from your domain are indeed legitimate, making it exceedingly difficult for cybercriminals to impersonate you.
2. Enhanced Email Trustworthiness: Implementing DMARC enhances the trustworthiness of your emails. Email providers are more likely to recognize your emails as safe and deliver them to the recipient's inbox.
3. Reduced Phishing Risks: DMARC is a powerful deterrent against phishing attacks. By reducing the success rate of such attacks, it safeguards individuals and organizations from potential harm.
4. Reputation Management: DMARC helps protect your domain's reputation. It ensures that your legitimate emails are not diluted by fraudulent ones, preserving trust in your brand or organization.

Conclusion

In an era where email threats are prevalent and sophisticated, DMARC emerges as the ultimate guardian angel of email authenticity. Although it operates discreetly in the background, DMARC is a potent tool in the fight against cyber threats. Its implementation is highly recommended for individuals, businesses, and email service providers, as it offers a robust defense against email impersonation and enhances the overall security of email communications. The next time you send or receive an email, know that DMARC is diligently working to protect you from email-based deception and fraud in the vast digital landscape.

To certify the domain for sending, a DNS record must be added to the domain. This can only be done by the administrator of your domain within your company. Follow these steps:

1. Find out who in your organization is responsible for managing domain entries. Keywords for such a role include: domain management / DNS management / DNS administration.
2. Invite the administrator to your Mail Designer project by adding them as a new participant ‘Admin’ to your project team: my.maildesigner.com > Settings > Participants > Invite Participants.
3. Contact your administrator and ask them to complete the domain verification using the information provided under my.maildesigner.com > Settings > From: Addresses.

Once they have completed everything correctly, a checkmark will appear under ‘Domain verified’.”

As an email sending service, Mail Designer 365 Campaigns is required to enforce spam prevention measures, such as GDPR in the EU and CAN-SPAM in the US. By law, marketing emails must provide a way for recipients to opt out of future emails.

For this reason, all email campaigns sent via Delivery Hub must contain an unsubscribe link.

Further benefits of including a clear unsubscribe link:

• Automatic unsubscribe handling (Delivery Hub will remove unsubscribed contacts for you)
• Clean email list – your campaigns are only being sent to engaged subscribers
• Fewer spam complaints
• Campaign-based unsubscribe rate tracking

How to insert an unsubscribe placeholder in your email design
To add an unsubscribe link to your email, click inside a text area in your design (e.g. in the email footer), then go to the app menu and select Insert > Mail Designer 365 Campaigns > Unsubscribe Link:

When you send your campaign via Delivery Hub, recipients will see the unsubscribe option in the footer of your email:

Learn more about Delivery Hub →

You can import email addresses to Mail Designer 365 Campaigns using the CSV import tool. It is available at:
https://my.maildesigner365.com/team/deliveries/addContacts

The first three column names are Email,First Name,Last Name

You can also add additional keys/columns and their attributes/values per entry as you go. The importer will automatically add the attributes to your contact database. All you need to do is define the keys/columns you plan to import in the first line.

Example:

You want to add a favorite color and a location for each of your contacts. In order to do so, define the first row of the CSV file with the following key/column names:

Email,First Name,Last Name,Favorite Color,Location

miller@example.com,Peter,Miller,blue,New York

smith@example.com,Jody,Smith,red,San Francisco

New contacts will be automatically

Good to know: You can re-import the CSV at any time with additional columns to enhance your contacts. All new attributes will then be attached to your contacts.

Need help? Download an example CSV file here for reference:
Mail_Designer_365_Campaigns_Email_Import_Example.csv

As part of the free Campaigns plan included with your Mail Designer 365 design plan, a Mail Designer 365 banner is displayed in the footer of emails sent via Delivery Hub:

These banners can be removed after switching to any paid Campaigns plan. Log in to your my.maildesigner365 account to explore the Mail Designer Campaigns plan options.

Mail Designer 365 Campaigns offers multiple ways to work together as a team:

Mail Designer 365 TeamCloud
Save your design to TeamCloud to give other designers in your Team access, so they can edit and make changes to your design. Designs saved in TeamCloud are also automatically made available to use with Crew Chat and Delivery Hub for the rest of your team.

Mail Designer 365 Crew Chat
Use Crew Chat to upload your Mail Designer 365 design as a web-based preview. Team members can preview your work and post comments and feedback from any device – including iPhone, iPad, Windows, Android. It's the fastest way to get everyone's input.

Mail Designer 365 Delivery Hub
Access your team's Mail Designer 365 designs in Delivery Hub to send as targeted email campaigns to your audience. Manage email contacts and lists, schedule and send campaigns, and benefit from detailled post campaign analytics.

Discover Mail Designer 365 Campaigns

Sending out an email blast via SMTP to a larger group of recipents will potentially cause problems with the new procedures put in place. This means that if you continue to use this process, your emails will most likely get blocked by the recipient email provider (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.). This will result in only a few of your recipients actually receiving the emails.

The thing triggering these blocks of email transmissions is not the nature of the email. Even personal Christmas Greetings will potentially get blocked if sent to a large enough audience. After all, how would the email provider know what nature the content of the email is? They block emails purely based on the number of emails being sent at the same time from the same origin.

Here is how Mail Designer Campaigns can help in this situation:
- When you don't have your own domain email address, we replace the From Address automatically with one of our verified Domains
- This address replacement would look as follows: Original Address - supercoolmails@yahoo.com New Address: supercoolmails.yahoo.com@sentwith.maildesigner365.com
- Since the Domain @sentwith.maildesigner365.com is fully DKIM certified, these emails would not be blocked due to DKIM issues.

Alternatively if you do have your own Domain, Mail Designer Campaigns allows you to DKIM verify your send address, so you can send from your own Domain without being blocked by the providers.

Are you new to Mail Designer? Why don't you try the Mail Designer Free Demo for Mac users.

We offer a free trial for the Mail Designer 365 App and a free plan for testing Mail Designer Campaings. These trials can be used to test all functionality of the app and the service, helping users identify the best fit for their needs. After this trial period, all sales are final upon subscription, in accordance with our Terms and conditions.
 
Please be aware that we cannot process refunds in the following scenarios:

• Non-usage of the app or service
• Failure to cancel your account within the cancelation period
• Lack of features or functionality on your subscribed plan
• Purchases made in error
• Exceptional circumstances beyond our control
• Violations to our Terms of Use