Best Practice's for Email Marketing Content

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to assist you in ensuring that your email campaigns are sent correctly and are not flagged as spam or blocked by Gmail.

This article will not only cover some best practices for sending emails but also sender authentication techniques such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC that can help you increase and ensure the successful delivery of email campaigns.

Sender Authentication

In this section, we will cover and provide instructions for setting up email sender authentication techniques such as SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMRAC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance).

SPF

Sender Policy Framework is an important email authentication technique that is designed to protect the sender and intended recipient from spoof, spam, and phishing attacks.

SPF is a feature that is added to your DNS (Domain name system), by doing this you can provide a public list of email addresses that are approved to send emails from your domain.

Although you can still send emails without SPF enabled, it is an additional level of authentication that when combined with DMARC and DKIM can help improve deliverability and avoid being flagged.

To add SPF to your DNS please read this article

DKIM

DomainKeys Identified Mail is important when you want your emails to appear legitimate and be less likely to be sent to a spam folder by the recipient email server. The basic function of DKIM is to detect whether or not the email has been altered while being transmitted.

DKIM uses public-key cryptography that is shared with the sender and the recipient, this allows DKIM to verify that the original email has been altered.

Why is DKIM important?

Firstly, email spoofing is becoming a popular technique for sending malicious spam and phishing. DKIM makes it harder for attackers to spoof emails from domains that you use. secondly, DKIM helps to build the long-term reputation of your domain over time.

To turn on DKIM to your DNS please read this article

DMARC

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and is an email authentication technique that is used to prevent spoofing which is when an email is sent from your domain without your permission. Scammers can fake the "From" field of an email to make it look as if it was sent by you, this can be used for fraud and other malicious purposes. DMARC gives you great visibility and reports into who is sending email on behalf of your domain, ensuring only legitimate email is received. To pass DMARC authentication, messages must be authenticated by SPF or DKIM. The authenticating domain must be the same domain that's in the message From: header.

To add DMARC please read these articles

Best Practices

Here are some best practices that you should follow when sending emails to Gmail accounts in order to avoid deliverability issues.

• Set up valid reverse DNS records of your IP addresses that point to your domain.
• Set up SPF and DKIM so they’re aligned.
• Use the same domain for sending email and for hosting your public website. Set up SPF and DKIM for this domain.
• Ideally, send all messages from the same IP address. If you must send from multiple IP addresses, use a different IP address for each type of message. For example, use one IP address for sending account notifications and a different IP address for sending promotional messages.
• Don't mix different types of content in the same message. For example, don't include content about promotions in sales receipt messages.
• Messages of the same category should have the same From email address. For example, messages from a domain called solarmora.com might have From addresses like this:
  • Sales receipt messages: sales@solarmora.com
  • Promotional messages: deals@solarmora.com
  • Account notification messages: alert@solarmora.com
• Check regularly that your domain isn’t listed as unsafe with Google Safe Browsing. To check your domain status, enter your domain in the Safe Browsing site status page. Check any other domains that are linked to yours.
• Don’t send test phishing messages or test campaigns from your domain. Your domain’s reputation might be negatively affected, and your domain could be added to internet blocklists.
• Don’t impersonate other domains or senders without permission. This practice is called spoofing, and Gmail may mark these messages as spam.
• Messages sent from an address in the recipient’s Contacts list are less likely to be marked as spam.