How to set up a domain

Before creating an email newsletter, you need to set up a domain from which you will send emails.

Free domains, such as @yandex.ru, @gmail.com или @mail.ru, cannot be used to send out newsletters. You need a corporate domain, i.e. an email address on the domain of your company.

For example, you can purchase the business.com domain and create a corporate email (@business.com) for it. Now you can send out email newsletters from this domain. One domain can have several different email addresses: support@business.com, contact@business.com, etc.

When creating an email template, you can specify any of these addresses as the sender. This address will be visible to the recipient:

Email authentication

The first thing to do after purchasing a domain is to confirm your rights to it. Only this way you can complete the email authentication procedure from the email server. Without this, your emails can easily go to Spam.

Authentication consists of setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on the DNS server of your domain. You need to go to the domain control panel and add several TXT records there. This section is usually called «DNS settings».

What is email authentication for?

• Setting up SPF, DKIM, DMARC will protect your subscribers from phishing attacks from your domain.

• It also improves the reputation of your domain and deliverability of emails.

• Without authentication, you cannot enable statistics in postmaster.

What is SPF?

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a TXT record with a list of IP addresses that you allow to send emails from your domain.

We recommend that you prohibit sending out emails from all IP addresses that are not listed in SPF. To do this, you need to enter records of different versions:

The spf.aksend.net domain contains an up-to-date list of Altcraft Platform senders' IP addresses.

If you use your sender domain for sending campaigns, then specify which SPF records already exist and add "include:spf.aksend.net" to them.

What is DKIM?

The DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) technology adds a digital signature to the email so that email providers can make sure that it is sent from your domain.

DKIM stores two encryption keys - private and public. The private one is used to sign emails. It is known only to the sender. The public one is added to the DNS records as a TXT file.

DKIM verification is conducted automatically on the recipient's side. If the domain is not authorized to send emails, your email may be marked as suspicious or placed in spam, depending on the recipient's policy.

You need to enter the following records (the Altcraft ak key is used):

XXXXXXXXXX is a unique code generated in the Altcraft Platform admin panel. We can help you to create a personal key - contact team@altcraft.com specifying the domain name.

What is DMARC?

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is a policy where you specify what to do with emails if something is wrong with SPF and DKIM records. We recommend that you set rules prohibiting receiving emails from outside IP addresses or incorrectly signed emails.

What is BIMI?

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is a means of identifying the sender that adds the brand logo to the newsletter.

If you want to learn more about how to set the sender's avatar to increase brand awareness, click here.

Domain for tracking actions

A tracking domain is a domain for tracking subscriber activity. It helps you to find out whether your subscriber opens your emails, reads them, which links they follow, etc.

It is usually a subdomain of the main one; it looks like this: trk.domainname.com.

Make the following record on the subdomain: