Enudge Help Centre

SPF, DKIM and DMARC

The methods to secure email delivery have improved significantly over the last few years.  It is now time to make sure that your email security methods are up to date to ensure the highest delivery into your customer’s inboxes.  We’re here to help you do that.

SPF

Adding an SPF record on your domain is the bare minimum recommended for ensuring delivery of your emails into your customer’s inbox.

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework, and is a method of telling email gateways which domains or IP addresses are allowed to send email on your behalf.  It has been in operation for a long time, and we have strongly recommended the addition of an SPF record on your domain for many years. 

How to add Enudge to your Domain Record:

It is a very simply process to ensure that your domain identifies Enudge as a valid sender of emails from your domain.

If you have an SPF record set for your root domain (i.e. yourdomain.com), you must add ip4:202.129.143.205 before the ‘all’ mechanism of this record.

If you do not have an SPF record for your domain you must create a TXT record with the following value:

v=spf1 ip4:202.129.143.205 ~all

The person who controls the setup of your domain name should be able to add or edit your SPF record in minutes.

It is important that you do not create more than one SPF record for your domain. If multiple domains need to be allowed to send on behalf of your domain they need to be merged within the one record. See the below for an example:

v=spf1 a mx include:spf.protection.outlook.com ~all

would need to be changed to:

v=spf1 a mx include:spf.protection.outlook.com ip4:202.129.143.205 ~all

If you have a Enudge Enterprise Licence, we will provide you the relevant IP address which you can then add to your SPF record, using this format (using the above example again):

v=spf1 a mx include:spf.protection.outlook.com ip4:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx ~all

(the x’s of course being replaced by your particular server’s IP address)

You may like to use the following online tool to help you create a correct SPF record: https://www.spfwizard.net

If you are having trouble arranging the change of your SPF record, we will be happy to assist you.

DKIM

DKIM is aimed at ensuring that only authorised senders and unmodified emails are delivered to email inboxes, by digitally signing your emails with a private key that only authorised senders have access to and checking that key against the message that arrives.  DKIM is being checked by enough email gateways now to make it an important factor in email delivery, hence the addition of support for this method of digitally signing your emails into Enudge.

Implementing DKIM with Enudge involves the following steps:

  1. Send an email to support@enudge.com.au to request for a DKIM record. Please make sure to clearly state the domain name you will be using to send emails.

  2. We will provide you with a DKIM record in a .txt file. Please note, the Selector will be “enudge”.

  3. Login to your DNS manager and create a new TXT record, using the details from the the supplied certificate. You may need to ask your web host for help to add the record – unfortunately different domain platforms may have slight differences re: the way these look.

    Important note: You can have multiple DKIM records for your domain, each with its own selector. This means, you must create a new TXT record for every new DKIM record. The DKIM associated with your Enudge sends will have a selector of ‘enudge’.

  4. Once you have created the TXT record, send us another email to confirm that the record is in place. We will run a final test to ensure your emails are passing DKIM authentication.

We also strongly recommend that you setup DKIM with all other services that send email on your behalf, for example, Gmail or Office 365.

DMARC

DMARC is a record on your domain which works alongside SPF and DKIM records to give email gateways a method of informing you when problematic emails, with your domain as the sender, have arrived at their email gateway.  Once you have published the record, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will provide Aggregate (RUA) and Forensic (RUF) DMARC reports on a daily basis and these reports will be sent to the email address that’s published in your DMARC record.

Implementing DMARC with Enudge involves the following steps:

  1. Generate a DMARC record – this can be done using a generator such as Easy DMARC – DMARC Record Generator.

  2. Add a TXT record for your DMARC to the DNS of your domain.  You may need to ask your web host for help to add the record.

    Important note: If you already see a record with name ‘_dmarc’, edit this record instead of creating a new record. This is important as you can’t have multiple DMARC records.

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