Deliverability

To get started sending emails with Lime Marketing, you will need to set up these deliverability settings in order to use your organization's sending domains. Incorrect settings can lead to emails being rejected or marked as spam.

Verify domain ownership

Before you can start using the domain as a sending domain you need to verify ownership by adding a verification TXT record to the DNS. The verification record is added to the root domain and you only need to add it once. When the domain is verified you can remove the verification record.

DKIM

With DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), Lime Marketing creates a digital signature based on the "From" information in the email with a private key. When a signed email from company.com is received, the signature is verified with the public key from company.com DNS.

DMARC

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) is an email authentication protocol that builds on SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) to enhance email security. It helps domain owners protect their domains from unauthorized use, such as phishing and email spoofing. Here’s how it works:

Domain owners publish a DMARC policy in their DNS records, specifying how receiving email servers should handle emails that fail SPF and/or DKIM checks. The policy can instruct the receiving server to quarantine or reject such emails. DMARC requires alignment between the domain in the "From" header and the domains used in the SPF and/or DKIM checks, ensuring that the email is genuinely from the stated sender.

DMARC provides reporting mechanisms, enabling domain owners to receive reports on email authentication results. These reports help identify and mitigate abuse of their domain. By enforcing DMARC policies, domain owners can significantly reduce the risk of their domain being used in phishing or spoofing attacks, thereby protecting their brand and improving email deliverability.

Alignment

DKIM and SPF alignment are crucial components of DMARC. DMARC uses these alignments to decide whether an email passes or fails authentication, helping to protect against email spoofing and phishing attacks. When DMARC checks passes it significantly increases the trustworthiness of the email, reducing the likelihood of it being marked as spam or malicious.

Lime Marketing emails always pass DMARC checks

All emails sent from Lime Marketing fulfill DKIM alignment hence passing the DMARC check

To further improve using a return-path/mail-from domain aligning with the "From" domain also makes the SPF alignment check pass.

DMARC tooling present valid DMARC as invalid when not passing SPF alignment

Some DMARC compliance tools can make it seem something is wrong with emails from Lime Marketing due to by default not passing SPF alignment checks. Since DKIM alignment check passes DMARC also passes. To also pass SPF alignment checks setup a custom return-path matching the sending domain used as "From".

Custom Return-path

A return-path/mail-from address is where the receiving server sends email bounce information. This domain also maintains its own reputation that can increase deliverability. It is recommended to add your own return-path domain in order to build and control your own sending reputation and optimize deliverability. By default, Lime Marketing customers use a shared return-path domain.