Having an Email newsletter is still one of the best online marketing tools, but starting February 2024, email authentication will be a requirement if you’re sending to Gmail and Yahoo Mail customers.
If you’re not familiar with it, Email authentication is a process of verifying the identity of an email sender. If you have your own domain name – like apricitymarketing.com and your own email address (like mary-frances@apricitywebsolutions.com) you will want to send email that avoid people’s spam box. It’s one way to make sure the email is from a trusted source, and not from a spammer or phisher.
This will help to improve your chances of landing in someone’s inbox and not their spam folder.
There are several methods of email authentication, You have two options for the type of record you can add:
CNAME records – This is the simplest and most secure way to authenticate your domain email address.
TXT record – This is the best option if you have multiple Constant Contact accounts using the same domain.
Constant Contact generates the CNAME or TXT record information, as well as the DMARC policy information, you’ll need to publish in your domain’s DNS settings, which can be done by your IT department or webmaster if you have one, or with the help of your hosting provider.
Once your DNS records are updated, it can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days for the newly published authentication records to propagate through the internet. (One I did on Siteground took 72 hours)
Quick note: if all this feels foreign to you, you can reach out to your host or feel free to book some time from us to help.
