Get Started with DMARC Authentication – Set Up Made Easy!

At LeadDragon, we understand the hurdles often faced in navigating marketing and sales automation. We’re about more than software; we’re about providing a personalized experience to achieve real business growth. One rather significant hurdle is email deliverability: it doesn’t matter how whip-smart your email campaign is if it doesn’t actually reach your recipients’ inboxes. That’s where DMARC authentication comes into play.

DMARC, or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance, helps to verify that the email purportedly from your domain is, in fact, honest-to-goodness you and not some phishing scam.

Let’s break down how to set this up. It’s easier than untangling headphones from your pocket.

1. Define Your DMARC Policy: You’ll first need to define your DMARC policy because it specifies how the receiving server should treat emails that fail SPF and/or DKIM authentication.
The policy options are:
‘none’: Do nothing, just collect and report data
‘quarantine’: Move unauthenticated emails to the spam or junk folder
‘reject’: Reject unauthenticated emails outright

2. Choose Your DMARC Policy’s Percentage: This decides the chunk of your domain’s email traffic that the DMARC policy applies to. If you use an enforcement policy like p=reject, we suggest starting with a low percentage (10% for example) and gradually increase it as you monitor the reports and gain confidence in your email authentication setup. This is unnecessary for p=none.

3. Create a DMARC Record: This will be a TXT record – think of it like a little digital signature – which is added to your domain’s DNS settings. The layout of this record should be:

v=DMARC1; p=[policy]; pct=[percentage]; rua=mailto:[aggregate_report_email]; ruf=mailto:[forensic_report_email]

Replace the placeholders with your chosen policy, percentage, and email addresses for receiving aggregate and forensic reports.

4. Implement the DMARC Record: Add the TXT record that you’ve created to your domain’s DNS settings and like a pizza in the oven, let it bake.

The adventure doesn’t end here. Your last but equally important step is monitoring the reports you receive after setting up DMARC. Carefully adjusting your policy and percentage based on these reports can help improve email deliverability, and further shield your domain from spam and phishing attacks. For example, if you choose ‘none’ as the policy with a 50% application rate and report emails as “[email protected]”, your DMARC record would look like this:

v=DMARC1; p=none; pct=50; rua=mailto:[email protected]; ruf=mailto:[email protected]

Voila! Hopefully less complicated than you feared. After setting up DMARC, be sure to monitor the reports you receive and adjust your policy and percentage as needed. This will help to optimize your email deliverability and further protect your domain from spoofing and phishing attacks.

Still need help? No problem! Book a free office hours session with our experts who can guide you along your DMARC voyage.

Remember, we’re here to make your life easier, not harder. That’s the LeadDragon guarantee!

 

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