Email Authentication Protocols

Owned by Ongage OngageConnect
Last updated: Jan 06, 2022 by Pratik Upadhyay
4 min read

Table of Contents:


DNS Services

Following are links to a variety of leading DNS services 

Check DNS Verification & Propagation of your Image & Tracking Domains

This is a great tool to check your tracking domain DNS CNAME status: https://www.whatsmydns.net/
In additional to verifying the status it also checks DNS propagation around the globe. 
Enter your tracking domain and choose the CNAME option to check verification and DNS propagation for that domain. On the results page it should point to: account_number.trkpnt.ongage.net.
 

(warning) Note: any time that DNS changes are made, you need to wait for DNS propagation to complete. DNS propagation usually takes a few hours, but in rare cases can take longer if it's a brand new domain, anywhere from 24 hrs - 72 hrs (i.e., 1 - 3 days).

 

In Case your DNS UI Does not Support Pointing a Bounce Sub-domain Domain to our mxprocessor.ongage.net

  1. Create an A record: bounce.yourdomain.com
  2. Create an MX Record as: bounce.yourdomain.com      MX 15      mxprocessorvs.ongage.net
  3. Enter the value “yourdomain.com” into the bounce domain setup dialog box:

Special Notes for setting up bounce domain in HostGator

In order to setup a bounce domain in HostGator, you'll need to do the following two steps:

Step 1: Create a Subdomain

  • Click on "Subdomains" icon
  •  Insert the below:

    In subdomain: bounce."your domain"
    in the document root insert a unique long name
    e.g, 
    Subdomain:"    bounce.yourdomain.com"
    Document root: /"customer path"/bounce.yourdomain12345

Step 2: Add an MX Entry

  • click on MX entry
     
  • The domain should be the same one from step 1
  • Select option "Remote mail Exchange"
  • Priority: 15 
  • Destenation: mxprocessor.ongage.net

Note: If the tracking is VS write mxprocessorvs.ongage.net

  • Click "Add new Record"

About SPF, DKIM and Ongage

(info) As Ongage is a front-end platform connecting to back-end email delivery vendors, who do the actual sending of the emails. DKIM and SPF are not setup in Ongage. Rather you need to go to your Email delivery vendor (e.g., Dyn, SparkPost, Mailgun, Amazon SES, etc.) and get the keys from them to put in your DNS. Typically those vendors have either clear instructions how to do that, or can help you set those up. Once set up, they will add a DKIM and SPF header to all your email messages, when sent from Ongage via one of those email delivery vendors. Please speak to your back-end email delivery vendor (aka ESP/SMTP vendor) on how to get those setup.

Resources for setting up SPF and DKIM 

Articles about Email Authentication: SPF, DKIM, DMARC and BIMI

  1. 3 DNS Records Every Email Marketer Must Know (March 2017)
  2. Email Authentication Guide (by MailChimp)
  3. Gmail DMARC policy update  (June 2016)

  4. What marketers need to know about DMARC (July 2016)

  5. Why DMARC Matters for Email Marketing (April 2017)

  6. Email Authentication Protocols: What Are They and Why Are They Important? (Ongage blog: September 2020)

About DMARC

Article explaining DMARC Overview

Image from dmarc.org

About SPF

The SPF is a TXT type record you get from your ESP and put in your DNS that specifies what servers may send emails on behalf of your domain. 

Ongage Best Practice Regarding SPF Records and Multiple ESPs

Ongage recommends using different sending domains for different ESPs, for a variety of reasons, one of them being that the reputation of 1 ESP account will affect the reputation of the other ESP account.

Having said that it is possible to merge 2 SPF records into one. So if you take the SPF record rule from one ESP and another SPF rule from another ESP, the two rules can be merged into 1 SPF record, so that you can use the same sending domain for both ESPs from Ongage, but as noted above this is not recommended.