Domain Authentication

Domain Authentication

Email marketing is constantly subjected to spamming and spoofing affecting the business in the long term. You, as an email user, would often find your inboxes with spam messages. Most of those email senders seem familiar to you but are actually not who they say they are. Spammers make use of a legit sender's identity to flood inboxes with unwanted. So, mailbox providers such as Gmail, Yahoo!, Outlook, and Zoho Mail use a validation process called domain authentication to identify unsolicited emails and filter them to spam. In this process, even genuine emails from an unauthenticated domain may land in spam.

Authenticating your domain indicates to your leads that your emails are genuine. It improves your domain reputation and increases the trust among your leads and mailbox providers.

Why should I authenticate my sender domain

Let's take a look at the various reasons as to why you should authenticate your domain.

  • Improves your email deliverability.
  • Prevents misuse of your domain.
  • Increases the chances of your email to land directly in the inbox.
  • Makes you an authentic email sender improving your reputation in the market.

What if I don't authenticate my sender domain

If you send emails from an unauthenticated domain, mailbox providers display to your contacts that your emails are from an unauthorized source. This is to warn your contacts that the email could be spam. Most mailbox providers view unauthenticated sender domains as suspicious, and differentiate them from authenticated senders to help their users avoid getting spoofed.

Gmail differentiates an unverified sender in the sender address part of an email with a "via", as shown in the image below. Here, zcsend.net is the sending source (Zoho Campaigns) and zylker.com is the actual email sender domain. Gmail has warned its users to avoid engaging with this email.

How Gmail shows emails from unauthenticated sender domains

Zoho Mail also shows the sender domain that the email has been sent via.

How Zoho Mail shows marketing emails from unauthenticated sender domains

In addition, Zoho Mail displays the original sender details in Sent by section of an email.

How Zoho Mail shows sender details

Zoho Mail also warns its users to be cautious while taking any actions in the email.

How Zoho Mail warns its users of emails from unauthenticated sender domains

Similarly, Outlook shows "on behalf of" in the sender address part of an email.

How Outlook warns its users of unauthenticated sender domain emails

To avoid this, authenticate your sender domain with Zoho Campaigns through SPF and DKIM.

How to authenticate your domain with Zoho MarketingHub

Zoho MarketingHub recommends authenticating your email domain before sending out newsletters to improve email deliverability.


    • Related Articles

    • Domain Authentication

      Email marketing is constantly subjected to spamming and spoofing affecting the business in the long term. We as marketers have often found our inboxes filled with spam messages. Most of those email senders seem familiar to us but are actually not who ...

    • How to authenticate my domain

      Domain Authentication is a mechanism that verifies the email from the point of its origin by validating the email sender. It checks emails to rule out any possibility of spamming or spoofing thereby protecting the sender's good reputation. ...

    • What is Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM)?

      This is the next level of domain authentication. It ensures that an email has not been tampered with during transmission. DKIM lets a domain associate its name with an email message by affixing a digital signature to it.

    • How to Authenticate your Domain with Zoho MarketingHub

      Domain authentication is a mechanism that verifies the email from the point of its origin by validating the email sender. It checks emails to rule out any possibility of spamming or spoofing thereby protecting your sender reputation. Authenticating ...

    • Email Authentication

      In this digital era email forms a major part of communication in every business or organization. Companies often use different domains to deliver the message to its recipients. In such cases it's crucial to establish an email policy that can define ...