For a quick explanation, if you send an email to someone with a Yahoo, AOL, or Gmail email address, they require your custom domain name to have a DKIM Record and DMARC Policy record in your domain name DNS. They are starting with the senders of 5,000 or more emails a day, but if they are mentioning it now, we are recommending adding them to your DNS as well. You never know when that one send from your email marketing will go over the limit.
From Gmail:
Email sender guidelines
Important: Starting February 2024, Gmail requires the following for senders who send 5,000 or more messages a day to Gmail accounts: Authenticate outgoing email, avoid sending unwanted or unsolicited email, and make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe. Learn more about the requirements for sending 5,000 or more emails per day.
If you do not know what that means, I will explain below, but you will quickly know what it means when you send someone an email that is bounced back to you non-deliverable. You will not be a happy camper neither would I.
First, what is a DKIM and DMARC Policy
DKIM Record - Imagine you’re sending a letter to your friend. To make sure your friend knows the letter is really from you, you put a special sticker on it that only you have. When your friend gets the letter, they check the sticker and know it’s really from you. That’s what a DKIM Record does! It’s like a special sticker for your emails that tells people it’s really from you.
A DKIM Record isn't complete without the DMARC Policy. Its like apple pie without a scoop of ice cream.
DMARC Policy - Now, let’s say your friend has a rule: if they get a letter with a fake sticker, they will not open it. That’s what a DMARC policy does! It’s a rule that tells email servers what to do if they get an email that doesn’t pass the sticker check.
So, both DKIM Record and DMARC Policy work together to make sure your emails are safe and really from you!
If you have email service, KloudEmail, Hosted Exchange (from Appriver), Microsoft 365 Email (aka 365 Hosted Exchange), or even Google Workspace Email we will be able to help you get that set up in your DNS. For many years before it was cool to have a DKIM record KartHost went the extra mile and added a DKIM record to your DNS for all KloudeEmail clients. But you will still need the DMARC to meet the new requirements.
How do you request? - Open a support ticket in your KartHost Customer Center account. Subject: "DKIM and DMARC check", tell us your domain name and we will check to see if you need one. If you do, we will add it to your DNS if we are managing it. Or if we are not managing your domain name DNS, we will provide you with the records to add or have your IT department add.
DMARC Policy do I need anything special - If you do not have a current DMARC policy for your domain name, the receiving email service needs to know what to do with the email. There are three choices. Here they are:
p=none (nothing happens, the email will be sent through)
p=quarantine (place into spam folder)
p=delete (receiving email service will delete the email immediately, no one will know what happened to it)
If you want reports sent to you so you can add services that send emails to you on your behalf that you might have forgotten about providing an email address to send a report to you will be helpful to make sure you have all services listed.
If you want more information on DMARC Policy and monitoring get in touch with us, even if your email is with another service, we can still help you.
Roy Randolph
COO KartHost
