People who deal with email marketing usually take interest in ways to enhance email deliverability and inbox placement. Applying technical email deliverability will come in handy to make the most of your messages. Some pieces of advice are applicable mostly to people with in-depth knowledge of IT technologies. If you are working in a large company, there is surely a dedicated professional or maybe a team. But if you are a member of a small business, you should have a deep understanding of it on your own.
Getting the hang of technical email deliverability involves learning a lot of acronyms and concepts, such as SPF, DNS, DKIM, DMARC, etc, and dealing with various email test services. Email testing tools are intended to provide successful email campaigns with a high deliverability rate and sender score which result in users’ engagement and high ROI.
In this piece of writing, we will give insights into SPF, one of the crucial email authentication protocols, and the potential of an SPF record builder . We will also explain the necessity of email test service regarding SPF in terms of email deliverability.
Avoid Vulnerabilities Related to Emails with an SPF Record Builder
In terms of cybersecurity, a vulnerability is a weak point that may be used by black hats with malicious intent. The same holds true for email vulnerability. It’s essential to get insight into the vulnerabilities of emails before we pay attention to SPF. A tentative event when a black hat may benefit from an email vulnerability is called an email threat. There exist a lot of email threats and you need to make sure that your business is secure when you deal with mailing. Watch out for the following email threats:
- Phishing. It is a kind of cyber fraud; its objective is to obtain vital business information like identification data.
- Spear phishing. It aims at particular individuals or staff members of a particular company. Cybercriminals try to convince them in various ways to share the required data with them.
- Business Email Compromise. It is intended to hoodwink high-ranking officers who are cleared to manage financial operations.
- Spoofing. Its goal is to make company workers believe that they receive messages from credible sources while they utilize seemingly lawful domains and email addresses.
- Ransomware and malware. They may deny access to your data, spread across the network, steal account information, do harm to the system, etc. Sometimes users are required to pay money to get access.
- Directory harvest attacks. They are directed at gaining access to the database of available email addresses from the business domain. Black hats sometimes combine this attack with the previous types.
To prevent some of the above-mentioned threats, it is necessary to implement SPF. It’s possible to generate SPF with an SPF record builder. If you are willing to make sense of SPF, keep on reading.
How to Monitor SPF with Email Test Services?
When you deal with sending emails, utilizing email test services is a must-have. As you spend a lot of effort and time on creating messages, you will be frustrated if you face mistakes that could have been corrected before sending them out. In this case, implementing email testing tools helps to prevent various issues and handle them.
With email test services you will be sure that you do your utmost within your email campaign. There are a number of services that differ in their objectives and usage. For instance, with email test service folderly.com you can take control of email deliverability and placement. So, with the help of email testing tools you can:
- Monitor the design and layout of your messages;
- Take control of the sender’s reputation;
- Make your deliverability rate higher;
- Check HTML validation;
- Inspect subject lines of emails.
Email test services that aim at taking control of SPF records can be identified separately. By means of cutting-edge tools you are supposed to restore SPF records for a particular domain name, check the validity of an SPF record, monitor the syntax of records until you publish them, and assess the performance of the record.
One of the types of modern tools is considered to be an SPF record builder, which may be applied to generate an SPF record. It enables you to add a domain in the SPF format, set the proper toggles, and choose if authentication may be failed or not. An SPF record builder assists in providing the privacy of email senders. Another email authentication method which is called DKIM may be used.
You can implement SPF and DKIM checkers in your work to defend your business against widespread email threats. Now the concept of SPF record and its mechanism need to be explained.
What Does SPF Signify?
An SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. It is considered to be a way of email authentication that prevents black hats (like spammers, and attackers) from sending messages in the name of your domain. An SPF record is a component of the domain’s DNS which comprises all the trusted IP addresses . By means of an SPF record, you are able to defend your domain from phishing and spoofing attacks while making aware of servers that are authorized to send messages on your behalf. SPF is regarded as a basic way of authentication but not the only one.
The benefits of an SPF record are indisputable:
- It has a positive impact on the reputation of the domain and, therefore, email deliverability.
- It positively affects brand reputation as SPF tackles domain impersonation and forestalls email spoofing.
If your business team uses G Suite, bear in mind that 3 methods of email authentication are possible: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. If you don’t utilize an SPF record in G Suite, messages from your company or domain are likely to be marked as spam. Combine different ways of authentication to maximize your email security.
How Does SPF Work?
To benefit from SPF, it’s necessary to publish an SPF record in the Domain Name System. An SPF record constitutes a list of IP addresses that are permitted to send messages in the name of the domain. The domain in the return-path address is applied to determine the SPF record. The receiving server verifies it to detect whether the sender of the message is on the list. If it is verified successfully, a link is established between the message and the email domain .
The process of utilizing SPF may be divided into three steps:
- Building an SPF record. It is possible to determine mail servers approved to send messages with your domain name. An authentication policy is established in this way. An SPF record generator like HostGator may be used to generate an SPF record for Shared and Reseller accounts.
- DNS lookup. An incoming email is being checked in the DNS. The “envelope from” address should include the domain name. The server verifies the IP address the message has been sent from to find out that it is authorized in the SPF record. If any checks are poor, the mail doesn’t succeed in SPF authentication.
- Authentication outcome. According to the rules indicated in the SPF record, a mail server may reject, deliver or flag the email received.
Related:
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Final Thoughts
When you deal with mailing, you should keep an eye on different aspects like email deliverability, sender reputation, or email authentication which can be monitored by various kinds of tools. It’s also important to implement an SPF record to provide email authentication and defend your domain and reputation against black hats.
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