Executive Summary
Email deliverability is critical to ensure your communications reach your audience, engage customers, and protect your brand. Implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is vital to achieving this goal. In short, SPF validates the authorized IP addresses that can send emails on behalf of a domain, while DKIM provides an additional layer of security through digital signatures. DMARC builds upon these two technologies, enabling domain owners to create a policy for email authentication and providing reporting features to gain insights into email activity. Read on to learn how these protocols are the keys to unlocking your email deliverability magic!
Introduction
While texting is acceptable for personal communications, the same is not valid for business. Email is still the primary communication tool for business purposes, making deliverability a paramount concern. For this reason, many companies rely on email as their primary means of acquiring leads, engaging with customers, and conducting transactions. However, deliverability challenges can present an issue due to spam, phishing, and fraudulent emails. Enter SPF, DKIM, and DMARC into the picture. These technologies not only help improve email deliverability for your business, but they also protect senders and recipients from cyberthreats by maintaining the integrity of email communications.
What exactly are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC?
Glad you asked! In short, this triumvirate works together, providing authentication protocols designed to elevate email deliverability and fortify security measures. Together, they form a potent alliance to verify that an email is genuinely from the sender it claims to be originating from. This trio protects the sender and recipient from spoofing and other cyberattacks.
SPF – Sender Policy Framework
Sender Policy Framework, better known in the industry by its acronym “SPF,” is an authentication method that utilizes DNS (Domain Name System) to establish a list of approved senders. SPF enables email senders to specify which IP addresses are authorized to send emails on their domain’s behalf. In a nutshell, it’s the first line of defense protecting senders and receivers.
When an email is received by the recipient’s server, one of the first actions taken is to verify that the IP of the email matches the sender’s SPF record. See, the SPF record retrieved from DNS determines if the origin server can send an email on behalf of the sender’s domain. If the IP address is not authorized, one of three actions are likely to be taken based on the configuration of the recipient’s server:
- The email may be flagged as spam and moved to the recipient’s spam or junk folder, thus reducing the chances of the recipient ever opening the email.
- The recipient’s server may reject or bounce the email outright, preventing it from reaching the recipient’s inbox. Again, depending on server configuration, the sender may receive a bounce-back notification informing them that the email failed to reach its destination, or it might reject it quietly.
- The server may accept the email but flag it with a warning or add a note indicating that it has failed authentication. This alerts the recipient to treat the email cautiously and may make them hesitant to act on the communication.
Any of those three conditions is undesirable and will significantly impact the chances of your email making it through to your intended recipient. For a deeper dive, check out the SPF Project for more details.
DKIM – DomainKeys Identified Mail
DKIM is another email authentication protocol that provides an additional layer of security by allowing the sender to sign the email using a digital signature. If you are familiar with PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), it’s a similar concept. DKIM uses a public-private key pair to sign and validate email messages.
Before leaving the sender’s server, the sender’s server signs the email with its private key. The signature selects specific parts of the email, such as the headers and body, to create a unique hash using the sender’s private key. This hash goes into the headers of the email as a DKIM-Signature header.
Once the email is received, the recipient’s server verifies that the signature matches the public key available in the sender’s DNS records. In addition to confirming the sender’s identity, DKIM also protects the email during transit to ensure the original content is intact and hasn’t been tampered with.
Without going too deep into the weeds here, the recipient’s server generates its own hash by using the same parts of the email initially used by the sending server to create the signature. If the newly generated hash matches the hash in the DKIM-Signature header from the sender, this confirms that the email’s content has not been altered during transit. If you’d like to learn even more, check out DKIM.org.
DMARC – Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance
DMARC builds upon SPF and DKIM by enabling domain owners to create a policy specifying how to authenticate emails sent from their domain. DMARC instructs receiving servers exactly what actions should be taken on emails that are claiming to be sent from their domain, but fail SPF and DKIM checks.
For example, the instructions from DMARC could be to flag the email as spam or reject the message. DMARC also provides a feedback loop with a reporting mechanism to give domain owners insights into the authentication results of emails sent using their domain. Additional information can be found on the DMARC website.
The Importance of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on Deliverability
Enhanced Email Security
One of the compelling benefits of using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC together is enhanced email security. They help protect senders and recipients from email spoofing, phishing attacks, and other malicious activities. By ensuring that only authorized senders can send emails on behalf of a domain and verifying the email’s integrity, these protocols make it more difficult for attackers to impersonate legitimate senders.
Improved Email Deliverability
By implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, your email deliverability will be vastly improved as their combined forces demonstrate to receiving email servers that the sender is trustworthy and more importantly, that the email is genuine. Email servers are more likely to deliver messages that pass authentication checks to the recipient’s inbox rather than marking as spam or rejecting them.
Increased Brand Trust
Utilizing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in your organization will help to increase trust in your brand. As these protocols go a long way to helping prevent your domain from being used for malicious purposes, recipients are more likely to trust emails from your domain. Increasing trust will lead to better KPIs on metrics such as open, click-through rates, and conversion rates. In short, it can help to boost your overall engagement from your audience with your email campaigns..
Monitoring and Reporting
DMARC enables valuable monitoring and reporting capabilities that help domain owners gain insights into their email ecosystem. These features enable email administrators to track the authentication results of emails sent using their domain, providing visibility into their email infrastructure and revealing potential issues or threats.
One of the primary components of DMARC reporting is the generation of Aggregate Reports and Failure Reports. Aggregate Reports are XML-based documents containing comprehensive data about the authentication results for all the emails sent from a domain. These reports are typically sent to domain owners daily and include information such as the IP addresses that sent emails on behalf of the domain, the authentication results – SPF and DKIM status, and the DMARC policy applied to the messages. This aggregated data allows domain owners to monitor their email delivery performance and detect any unauthorized use of their domain for sending emails.
In addition to Aggregate Reports, DMARC provides Failure Reports, AKA as Forensic Reports, which deliver detailed information about individual email messages that failed DMARC authentication. These reports are sent in near real-time and include the original message, email headers, and the reasons for the authentication failure.
By examining these forensic reports, domain owners can identify root causes, such as email spoofing or phishing attempts. This insight allows you to take the appropriate action to remedy the problem. DMARC is a vital tool enabling domain owners to monitor, analyze, and improve email security and deliverability.
Conclusion
An investment in email security and deliverability by implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in your organization is well worth your time and effort; it is essential for businesses looking to thrive in an increasingly competitive online environment. By combining these robust protocols, a company can safeguard its brand reputation, and enhance email deliverability rates, while increasing recipient trust. With the powerful feedback loop provided by DMARC’s reporting capabilities, you can achieve invaluable insights to help make data-driven decisions to improve your email strategies. To unlock the full potential of your email reach, don’t delay implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for your domain.
If you are in the market for an ESP (Email Service Provider), take a look at our post on choosing the right ESP here. Do you have questions or need help with the topics presented? Then please feel free to reach out in the comments or contact us to find out how we can help your organization wield the power of SPF, DKIM and DMARC to get your messages delivered to your customers’ inbox.