SPF, DKIM and DMARC Records in Act! CRM
On 1st February 2024, various email service providers, such as Gmail, Yahoo!, and Outlook released a statement advising that people emailing their clients should be set up on three email authentication methods: DMARC, DKIM, and SPF.
Senders that aren’t authenticated with these methods risk their emails automatically being directed to the junk and spam folders of their recipients – harming the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns and potentially leading to missed communications.
What are DMARC, DKIM, and SPF?
DKIM and SPF are a way for a sender to show that they are legitimate and not spammers, phishers, or another unauthorised party sending emails on behalf of a domain they do not own.
DMARC works slightly differently by telling a domain what to do when DKIM or SPF fails. For example, marking the failed emails as spam, delivering the emails anyway, or dropping them altogether.
If your domain is not set up with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC you run the risk of your emails being automatically quarantined as spam, or your domain being impersonated by spammers.
How are DMARC, DKIM, and SPF set up for my emails?
To set up these email authentication methods, you’ll need to speak to your current email provider who will create your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records.
Following this you’ll need to speak with your Domain Registrar (The company you purchased your company domain through such as GoDaddy, 123reg, Zen, etc) to give them the details of these 3 records. The records will need to be created in your Domain Name Services (DNS) Records.
In some cases, your email provider & Domain Registrar might be the same company.
Depending on the mailing system you use, different records may be required, so it is important to check with every email provider or system that you use to send outbound emails. For example, if you use Outlook and Act! CRM – you will need to set up these records on each system.
Setting up DMARC, DKIM, and SPF for Act! Marketing Automation
Here are two Act! articles you can follow for implementing DMARC, DKIM, and SPF records within Act! CRM. You’ll need to work with your Domain Registrar to create these for you.
The following page will provide instructions for setting up DKIM in Act! Marketing:
We strongly recommend also configuring a Custom Click URL, instructions for this can be found here:
Can Softext Help?
This is not something Softext can help with entirely, although we are happy to advise, review, and assist our customers where possible. This is because we do not have access to your Domain Registrar to set up the records on your behalf.
