Email Deliverability: the magic of DKIM and SPF
The sender of business email does not always have time to worry about the technical side of things. But as practice shows – this is a wrong attitude and it can seriously harm the deliverability of emails, even if all other conditions are met. A lot of useful expert advice on how to avoid mistakes when setting up mailing lists can be found at https://reply.io/email-deliverability-best-practices-and-mistakes, where the most important and trendy mistakes are discussed. By the way, one of the flaws which can obviously prove to be a decisive factor in the “impenetrability” of mailing lists is the configuration of sender authentication tools. Let’s talk a bit about the technical settings and the magical effect of DKIM and SPF on message deliverability.
DKIM and SPF: The super power of encryption, authentication and security
DKIM and SPF complement each other and are almost ideal protection against forgeries and spam attempts. Setting up these services correctly does not take much time. But it can change the attitude to a particular mailing address on the part of mail services. It is not superfluous to use DMARC authentication system as well. It allows you to control the rules of SPF and DKIM settings, i.e. to adjust it more finely.
Sender Policy Framework: protect yourself from spammers
SPF or Sender Policy Framework is an e-mail authentication system designed to detect spam. Technically, this protocol checks the IP address of the sender and identifies it before the email is sent to the recipient. That is, if this confirmation does not come, then the letter goes into spam. If the number of such unconfirmed emails reaches a critical level, the mailing address can get blacklisted. However, such action may have nothing to do with the user action, but just be due to a bad configuration.
If SPF is configured, there is almost a 100% guarantee that the email domain will not be used for spamming and unauthorized communication on behalf of the company.
DKIM Signature: Guaranteeing the authenticity of the sender
DKIM or Domain Keys Identified Mail service indicates that an e-mail message belongs to a specific sender. DKIM is a kind of electronic signature of the sender which binds not so much physically but with several parameters to a certain method and source of sending of the e-mail. That is, the recipient knows for sure that the received letter is from a particular sender. It is not generated from a multimillion spam mailing.
You can set up these services by yourself and learn a bit about SPF and DKIM services. You can also contact your Internet Service Provider. Or order the professional services of IT-specialists. But it is important to perform this setup and prevent lost profits, as well as loss of interaction with customers.
