Domain Authentication

With the increase in the quantities of spam, many email providers will check emails they receive against various authentication standards to confirm they have been sent legitimately.

You can check some of these authentication standards for your sending domains in Engaging Networks. By doing this, you will be able to improve the deliverability of your emails sent from Engaging Networks to your supporters’ inboxes.

Running the tool

Go to Emails > Settings, and then the Domain authentication tab. This will list any sending domains you are using. Sending domains are the domains in the email addresses you use for thank you emails or email campaigns. For example, if you send an email from the sender info@mycharity.org, then the sending domain will be listed as mycharity.org.

You will have at least one sending domain listed if you are using our email tools or thank you emails. 

Click Validate to test your domain.

Viewing the results

When you click Validate, we will test the domain against three types of validators: SPF, DKIM and Return Path Alignment (DMARC). The results of each test will either show a green tick or otherwise, a red cross or alert sign.

In the example below, you can see three green ticks which means it is fully authenticated. 

SPF, DKIM and Return Path Alignment are required to be configured to send email from Engaging Networks.

If SPF isn’t set up properly, then you will see a red cross. 

Acting on the results

Read the information given by the tool to correct any problems. You may want to copy and paste the information and send it to the person or team that manages your domain. Once you’ve made the changes, re-validate to see whether it works.

To enable DKIM and/or Return Path, note that you need to tick the checkboxes in the tool.

Emails cannot be sent with domains without DKIM and Return Path configured. The following errors will display if an unauthenticated sending domain is set as a sender.

A note about SPF records

Our tool will tell you whether your SPF record has included our sender envelope successfully. However, if there are other issues with the record (such as too many rules), we do not report this here. We would recommend using third-party tools such as https://cable.ayra.ch/spf/ or https://www.kitterman.com/spf/validate.html to fully validate your domain.

If you want to find out more about SPF records and some tips on managing multiple SPF records, click here.

Other tips

Check this document for more tips on email deliverability.