Recently, a client asked a question as we were working on their email/domain authentication: “Why do I have to do this?”
When email marketers go from an email platform that doesn’t utilize authentication tactics like Domain Keys and SPF records to one that does — like emfluence — it’s not uncommon to be confused, so they were asking a great question! The reason some email service providers don’t authenticate is because it definitely takes a bit of time and some technical/website help. It can be the difference between starting to send email today and having to wait until the end of the week. Most email service providers that don’t authenticate serve email marketers who are mailing to a few hundred or a few thousand people at most. So they choose to send email “on behalf of” your email address, which allows them to bypass the step of gaining authorization to send from @yourdomain.com.
However, authentication becomes very important when sending to more than a few thousand emails at a time to any one email client. For example, if you have about 4000 emails on your address list, according to Litmus, statistics show that probably about 600 of them are going to be Gmail addresses. (Keep in mind, this number may be under represented due to automatic enablement of images and/or image blocking). That’s enough for Gmail to care whether you are who you say you are. They rightfully want to protect their users’ inboxes from fraudulent senders and if you’re not authenticating, they may decide to keep you out of inboxes to err on the side of safety. So emfluence – and most mid- and high-level email service providers – help our clients authenticate their domains so as to be able to send legitimately from the same domain as the website links in the body of the email.
If you aren’t currently authenticating your emails, consider this: according to returnpath.com, by the year 2020 it’s predicted that only legitimate emails will make it into consumer and enterprise inboxes. In other words, if your emails are unauthenticated they will be blocked. Now is the time to get on board with authentication practices so you can be ahead of the game, meanwhile increasing your brand awareness and ROI. That’s not a bad tradeoff if you ask me.
Our partners at return path have published multiple articles that go into more technical detail regarding authentication and would be a great resource to learn more.
Here at emfluence, our authentication process gives your emails the best shot at reaching your targeted inboxes. Want to chat about how to authenticate your domain for your emfluence Marketing Platform account? Reach out to your account rep at emfluence — we’d love to help!
(Not an emfluence client but still need to know more about authentication? Reach out to us anyway! 877-81-EMAIL)
