The role of authentication in delivering your email

We go to great lengths to make sure our emails make it to recipients’ inboxes. We look at the send time, the subject, the preheader and the content. But most marketers neglect the email’s authenticity.

Correctly setting up email authentication is easy, and will significantly improve the deliverability of your emails.

When you send your emails, the ISP assesses to what extent you are authentic, and whether you aren’t pretending to be someone else. If you appear to be trustworthy, your email has a higher chance of making it to the recipient’s inbox.

Authentication is set up by DNS, among other things. The DNS system can be compared to a phone book. In a table containing records (domain) names are translated into IP addresses. In order to set up the Webpower licence, a number of DNS settings are required. We use 3 different DNS records:

A records (Address record)

A records indicate on which server (or, more specifically, which IP address) the webpages of a certain domain name are located. In Webpower, this is related to the set local domain. The local domain is the foundation of the links displayed in emails sent from Webpower.

Records aren’t set in Webpower, but in the DNS settings that clients or their hosting parties maintain.

MX records (Mail eXchange record)

MX records indicate which mail servers have been set up to receive emails sent to a certain domain. When it comes to emails sent from Webpower, it is important that a correct MX-record has been set up for the local domain, for dealing with bounces (emails that cannot be delivered) among other things.

TXT records (TeXT record)

In order to make for optimal deliverability for emails sent from Webpower, we provide TXT records that can be used to verify the authenticity of emails, and that can also be used to counter false use of a domain by using SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

SPF records (Sender Policy Framework)

SPF records are consulted when receiving mail servers check whether the sending mail server was authorised to send emails in the name of the sender domain. This is one of the ways to detect falsified sender information.

DKIM records (DomainKeys Identified Mail)

DKIM is a system that is used to add a digital signature to emails. A TXT record can be used to publish information like a key to verify the authenticity of an email.

DMARC records (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance)

DMARC is a system in which a domain can publish a policy that offers advice on what receiving mail servers should do whenever a non-authorised server tries to deliver a message from a certain sender. DMARC combines the best of SPF and DKIM.

Frequently asked questions