About Sender Email and Domain Verification
Before sending emails using Maildroppa, you'll need to verify your sender email.
We also recommend that you set up DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). DKIM is an email authentication system that protects you and your subscribers. Setting up DKIM also indicates to us that you own the domain you wish to send from.
In this guide, we explain how to confirm your Sender Email and set up DKIM, more details about what DKIM is , and why we use it for every email sent via Maildroppa.
How to verify your Sender Email and set up DKIM
This might seem like a daunting task but it's actually straightforward (depending on your DNS provider).
Follow the steps below:
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Fill in wizard to enable “Email Sender” settings
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After you have completed the wizard, go to Settings > Email Sender.
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Start Sender Domain verification (optional)
Your Sender Domain is the domain name you use to send emails on Maildroppa. Subscribers will see it in the email address in the “from” line of emails they receive from you. Emails will be sent from '[email protected]' until you add your custom domain. Press the button ”Set Up Sending Signed Emails” to start the verification process.
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Add the following values to your DNS settings:
On this screen we've generated text that you need to add to your DNS. This is your public key. Simply copy and paste the text to your DNS settings as a TXT record. You can find instructions for the most popular providers at the links below. Please note that some of these guides explain how to generate the text to add as a TXT record. We've already generated that text for you, so all you need to do is copy and paste!
important: By completing this step, you give us permission to deliver emails on your behalf. The public key must remain as a TXT record in your DNS as long as you want to keep sending emails with Maildroppa. If it's missing, emails will automatically fail to send.
It usually only takes a few seconds or so to verify your DNS details, but it may take longer in some cases. After we've completed our process, the DKIM verified icon will show up.
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Congratulations! Your Sender Email and Domain have been verified.
What is DKIM?
There are two main aspects to DKIM: a private key and a public key.
The private key is just that: private. For your protection, no one should ever see it. We store it and use it to digitally sign every email you send on Maildroppa.
The public key can be seen by anyone. It is a string of text (generated by us) that you will add to your DNS as a TXT entry. Every email you send on Maildroppa contains the name of the public key, although it's not visible to your subscribers. Your subscribers' email provider (Gmail, Yahoo! Mail etc.) will see the public key and look it up in your DNS. The email provider can then technically validate that the email is signed correctly. This proves that the email was really sent from the domain it was claimed to be sent from.
Why do we use DKIM?
It's important to us that we provide you the highest delivery rate possible. We know that the less emails end up in spam, the more your business can grow.
DKIM is one (of many) techniques we use to help make that happen.
Imagine a spammer wants to scam people by pretending to be a legitimate business. They fire off emails that claim to be from a particular business with an appropriate sounding email address. But they aren't actually sending it from that domain — they just claim to.
Email servers try to catch emails like this and send them straight to spam. Adding a digital DKIM signature to your email helps email servers identify you. If everything checks out, the server knows your email has been sent from your domain as you say it has. We could say you've “proved” your identity.
Using DKIM gives you a headstart in your reputation with email servers. And a better reputation with email servers means more emails into inboxes, and less in spam. Every time you send an email, the server will recognize you as having a proven identity. This will factor into the rating the server assigns to you. Your rating will then increase or decrease depending on many factors. For example, if you send valuable content that your subscribers actually read, your rating will increase. If you send frequent emails with little value to your subscribers, they are less likely to open them (or worse, report them as spam). This decreases your rating. It's possible to build your reputation without using DKIM, but DKIM does make it easier.
Using DKIM across all emails sent using Maildroppa also helps us maintain a good reputation. Maildroppa's reputation relies, in part, on our users' reputations. That's why we require every user to set up DKIM. We also screen users and prohibit anyone from using Maildroppa to spam people. If our reputation is good, this helps us maintain our high delivery rate which affects everyone who uses our service.
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