Right Technology Setup Guide for High Email Delivery

Email open rate depends on inbox email delivery and email delivery to inbox can be achieved with right technology setup on the domain name from which you are sending outgoing emails.

Note 1: This guide is more for developer / IT team, who can you with right technology setup on your email sending domain name. If you understand how DNS works for a domain name, then, you are ready to go ahead with following setup.

Note 2: Below mentioned domain name and sending domain name are same, this is the domain name which is used in sending email, inside “from email address”. For example, if you are sending outgoing email campaigns from email address [email protected]; then, the sending domain is example.com. And at any SMTP relay server if you have verified domain name example.com; then, you can send email from address of format – [anyname]@example.com, i.e. [email protected] or [email protected] can also work in “from email” field.

1. Verified domain name at SMTP relay provider

In order to start sending emails from your domain name, first you should verify your domain name at your SMTP relay service provider. So, you need to verify your domain name at your account of Operion MailBlast, Mandrill, SendGrid, Sparkpost, Leadersend, Elasticemail or MailGun, whichever you plan to use with Operion MailBlast.

Note: In Operion MailBlast first you need to verify the sending from email address, then, add the sending domain name according to your requirement.

2. Valid SPF and DKIM setup on domain name

SPF stands for “Sender Policy Framework” and DKIM stands for “Domain Keys Identified Mail”, both records are important for any sending domain name, inorder to send verified emails to mailboxes.

For proper SPF and DKIM verification, follow the mentioned guides below to setup on domain name properly.

• For Operion MailBlast, you only need to add DKIM record, for which you will have create CNAME record on your sending domain name, for this,, guide is available here.
• Follow these links to add DKIM on domain name at SendGrid and add SPF on domain name at SendGrid.
• ElasticEmail SPF and DKIM record tutorial is available here.
• DKIM and SPF verification guide for MailGun.
• SparkPost SPF and DKIM verification guide.
• DYN guide for SPF and DKIM domain record verification.

3. Valid mailbox setup on domain name to incoming receive emails

In order to receive any email on your email address of the format using your sending domain name you need a mailbox attached to the domain name. This mailbox can be provided from your hosting provider or you can add your own mailbox from 3rd party providers like, Google Apps for Works, Microsoft emails for customer domain, Yandex free mailbox service and so on.

You need to add MX record of the mailbox provider properly to your domain name in order to receive incoming emails.

4. Tracking domain setup

There are many advantages of adding tracking domain to your Operion MailBlast paid subscription, this customization feature automatically increases your email delivery and open rate.

Advantages of adding custom tracking domain to Operion MailBlast Pro account:

It make your emails fully white labelled helping them reach the subscriber’s inbox rather than the spam folder.

• Create your own brand image with no Operion MailBlast footprints, with which your subscribers will easily relate to.
• Build your own sending reputation with Mailbox provider.
• It makes your subscribers much more confident in opening your emails and clicking links in your email body.
• Access Operion MailBlast from your own configured tracking domain name.

You can follow the guide here inorder to add and activate custom tracking domain name to your SMTP delivery server account.

5. Add and Verify Sending domain to Google Postmasters

Adding your sending domain name to your Google Postmasters account add one more layer of domain verification to Google App Mailbox and Gmail Mailboxes. This helps you to get good email delivery inside Google App Mailbox and Gmail Mailboxes.

Add the sending domain name to your Google Postmasters account and verify them here: https://postmaster.google.com/u/0/

6. Add valid DMARC record to domain name

DMARC stands for “Domain-based Message Authentication”, this authentication system came into existence very recently and it adds more reliability your sending email address.

Requirement and Working of DKIM is explained in detail at ReturnPath blog post – How to Explain DKIM in Plain English

You can build correct DKIM record by following this blog post – Build Your DMARC Record in 15 Minutes.

For example, if your domain name is mailblast.com; you can add DMARC record like: _dmarc.mailblast.com in TXT record and point to v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]; ruf=mailto:[email protected]; fo=1;

You can find your domain hosting provider related DNS update tutorials from here.