What is a custom domain sender?

A custom domain sender is the complete email address used to send email campaigns; for instance, [e-mail]. This kind of domain or custom email sender is the best option in the process of deliverability and, moreover, it improves the image of your brand. We can see a real example:

As we can notice here; the email was sent From: maria.duque@mdirector. This email address is a custom domain sender, i.e. [e-mail]

In email marketing, the name that we choose as a custom domain is very important due to the mailbox providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) check features about it, especially in relation to the reputation. Also, mailbox providers check domain configurations and email authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). 

One of the main recommendations is not use sender’s name noreply, it means [e-mail]; essentially, noreply does not improve the engagement from the recipients of our email campaigns.

Setting up the custom domain sender properly is crucial to avoid the spam folder, or to avoid a blocking due to a lack of the email authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). I.e., custom domain sender has to be verified and authenticated properly. A sending domain is a domain that is used to indicate who an email is from via the From: header. Using a custom sending domain enables you to control what recipients see as the From: value in their email clients. DNS records can be configured for a sending domain, which allows recipient mail servers to authenticate your messages. You prove the authentication for sending on behalf of a company. To sum up, it is a security key, no one can send on behalf of you, only you.

This process is divided into two stages. The first stage should be done on your DNS platform or service. The second stage will be done by MDirector and only in the case that the first stage was done and completed previously.

As we say, email authentication provides a way to verify that an email comes from who it claims to be from. Email authentication is most often used to block harmful or fraudulent uses of email such as phishing and spam.

In practice, we use the term email authentication to refer to technical standards that make this verification possible. The most used email authentication standards are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. SPF and DKIM are mandatory to use a custom sender domain on MDirector platform; however, DKIM is optional.

SPF allows senders to define which IP addresses are allowed to send mail for a particular domain.

DKIM provides an encryption key and digital signature that verifies that an email message was not faked or altered.

DMARC unifies the SPF and DKIM authentication mechanisms into a common framework and allows domain owners to declare how they would like email from that domain to be handled if it fails an authorization test.

For further information about setting up the custom email sender check this link out: https://mdtr.io/vRGTg.