Email deliverability is critically important to any business. Regardless of the email service provider that you use, it's worth the effort to do everything in your power to make sure your emails are landing in your customers' inboxes.

This article details steps that you can take to maximize the deliverability of your emails. It also shares some of the best practices that Outseta employs to maximize the deliverability of your emails.

If you plan to send emails from Outseta we recommend that you complete these items as they will ensure that you email have near perfect deliverability scores.

1. Custom Support Email Address

We recommend that you go to HELP DESK > SETTINGS and setup a Custom Support Email Address. This is typically a "cleaner" looking email address than the "Inbound email address" provided by Outseta. This email address serves two purposes:

  • It will be used as the "From" address for all of the transactional emails that Outseta sends on your behalf.
  • If emailed, it will create a support ticket. This is configured by setting up a mail forward, so emails sent to your "Custom support email address" get forwarded to your "Inbound email address."

2. Set up an SPF record in your DNS

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication standard that compares the email sender’s actual IP address to a list of IP addresses authorized to send mail from that domain. The IP list is published in the domain’s DNS record.

If you do not already have an SPF record for your root domain (i.e., yourdomain.com), you can add a new DNS record of type TXT for your root domain, and give it a value like this:

v=spf1 mx include:sendgrid.net ~all

The mx in this value says that domains authorized with your MX record are all allowed to send out email on your behalf. The include:sendgrid.net says that SendGrid is also allowed to send out email on your behalf. The ~all at the end says that no on else should be sending email on your behalf.

If you already have an SPF record, you should not create a second one. Instead, the contents should be merged into a single SPF record. All of the values should be between the v=spf1 and the ~all.

For more information on SPF syntax, check out dmarcian for more information. Fraudmarc has a tool for checking the validity of your SPF record.

3. DMARC Policy

DMARC was formed to allow email senders to influence unauthenticated mail by publishing their preferences in a discoverable and flexible policy.
 
Google and Yahoo introduced new, stricter requirements for email senders starting from February 1, 2024. As part of these new requirements, both Google and Yahoo now also require you to have a DMARC record set up for your sending domain.
 
Outseta customers should define a dmarc1 record in their domain to comply with these new requirements. Make sure that it is set up with a policy enforcement option set to none. 
 
v=DMARC1; p=none;

There is guidance on how to edit DNS records with different DNS providers in the next section.

4. Domain Authentication

By default all emails sent out are signed by Outseta.com. If you'd like to have emails signed by your own domain, you can add a few CNAME records to your DNS to authenticate your own domain for sending. In addition to further improving deliverability this also removes the notice at the top of email messages that say that they were sent via Outseta.com.  
 
1. Go to SETTINGS > INTEGRATIONS > EMAIL DOMAIN AUTHENTICATION and click START AUTHENTICATION. 
 
 
2. Enter to domain that you want to send emails from and click NEXT.
 
NOTE: You don't need to enter https:// or www. The format that you enter your domain in should be yourdomain.com as shown un the screenshot below.
 
 
3. Add the following DNS records with your domain provider, then click VERIFY DOMAIN. 
 
 
If you are unfamiliar with adding DNS records, some guidance on how to add these records with popular DNS providers is provided below.

How to edit DNS records with common providers

Here are instructions for editing DNS records with popular domain providers. If your service isn't listed here, log in to your provider's site and search their help documents, or contact their customer support team.

Amazon Web Services: Configuring DNS, Resource Record Types

Dreamhost: DNS Overview

GoDaddy: Add a CNAME Record

Google Domains: DNS Basics

Hostgator: Manage DNS records

Hover: Edit DNS Record

Namecheap: SPF & DKIM

Squarespace: Advanced DNS Settings

Stablehost: How do I get to cpanel?

1&1: Domain Guidelines

Wix: Managing DNS records

 

Troubleshooting: Domain Authentication Verification Failing

If you're having trouble verifying your domain for email sending, the issue is usually the "Host" values that you are entering with your DNS provider. Specifically, some DNS providers will automatically add the ".yourdomain.com" to the end of the host values.

Try entering all of the host values without this bit appended to the end.

For example, enter s1._domainkey instead of s1._domainkey.outseta.com. Repeat this pattern for all of the Host values that you enter in your DNS provider—email support(at)outseta.com is this does not resolve the issue.

5. Email Batching

The very first time you email any list of recipients that you haven't emailed before, Outseta will deploy your message in batches. With each batch of emails sent we check to see that bounce and spam rates are low, then deploy your emails in increasingly larger batches until the send is completed in full.
 
It's important to know this, as your first email send will deploy messages more slowly than you may otherwise have expected—particularly if you're emailing a very large list.
 
This only occurs the first time that you send an email to a new list of recipients—subsequent sends will be deployed in full immediately.
 
Our sending algorithm specifically looks for spam and bounce rates that are less than 3%—as long as your emails remain under those thresholds, your campaigns will be sent in full. If you see that one of your emails have stopped sending, it's likely because the spam or bounce rates reported are over this threshold.
 
In this case we recommend running your email list through NeverBounce. NeverBounce is an inexpensive tool that can be used to remove any invalid email addresses from your list, protecting you by keeping you from sending emails to addresses that bounce.

Useful Resources

Mail Tester—Use this tool to test your email deliverability. The tool will provide you with an email address that you can send messages to. You can then see a report with a detailed score of all the different parameters that are important for email deliverability.
 
If you have any questions about email deliverability, please email us at support(at)outseta.com.