Act-On Configuration to Enhance Email Delivery

• Act-On Configuration Overview

  When you set up a new Act-On account, you have a short list of technical things to get right so your emails land in the inbox and your website tracking works. This page is the map: what has to happen, who has to do it, and which article covers each step. Who does this: Marketing owns the outcome and kicks off the requests. IT (or your DNS/hosting provider) publishes the records. Act-On Support...

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• What is Sender Policy Framework (SPF)?

  SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a public list - kept in your domain's DNS - of every mail server that's allowed to send email using your domain. Recipient servers check that list and reject or flag anything sent from a server that isn't on it. Who does this: Marketing owns the outcome. IT (or your DNS provider) publishes the TXT record Time needed: 2 minutes to read; publish takes an IT tick...

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• What is DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)?

  DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) attaches a tamper-evident digital signature to every email you send. Recipient servers check the signature against a public key in your DNS. If it matches, the message is genuinely from you and hasn't been altered in transit. Who does this: Marketing owns the outcome. IT (or your DNS provider) publishes the CNAME record Time needed: 2 minutes to read; publish...

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• What Is DMARC?

  DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is the policy that ties SPF and DKIM together. It tells recipient servers two things: which of SPF or DKIM should pass for your domain, and what to do if a message claiming to be from you fails those checks. Since February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo require every sender to have one. Who does this: Marketing owns the outcome and...

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• Editing your DNS to Implement DKIM

  Setting up DKIM means publishing one DNS record at your hosting provider - a CNAME that Act-On Support gives you during onboarding. Exactly where you click to publish that record depends on which provider hosts your DNS. This article walks through the five we see most often: Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Bluehost, HostGator, and Network Solutions. Who does this: IT or whoever has DNS access at your hos...

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• Email From Setup

  When you pick the email addresses that appear as the From name on your messages, every domain those addresses use needs to be authenticated so Act-On can send in your name. If you send from info@company.com and sales@ourcompany.net, you complete this setup for both company.com and ourcompany.net. Who does this: Marketing picks the From addresses and owns the outcome. IT publishes the DNS recor...

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• Envelope From Domain Setup

  Every email your platform sends travels inside a digital envelope. The Envelope From domain - a subdomain dedicated to email routing, like mailer.company.com - is the return address on that envelope. It's separate from the From address recipients see in their inbox. You set this up once when you first stand up your Act-On account, and rarely touch it again. Who does this: Marketing picks the s...

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• Dedicated IP Setup

  A dedicated IP means your email sends go out from an address that's yours alone - no other Act-On customers share it. You get full control of the sender reputation, and ISPs judge you on your own behaviour. In return, you take on the work of warming that IP up carefully so mailbox providers learn to trust it. Who does this: Marketing decides whether a dedicated IP is right and owns the warm-up...

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• Manage From Addresses and Email Senders

  From addresses are the sender names your recipients see. In Act-On, you can send from your own email, from a colleague's, or from a marketing or sales alias like hello@company.com. This page covers adding, verifying, editing, and deleting those addresses. Who does this: Marketing admins in Act-On. No IT or DNS work is needed here, assuming the domain has already been set up via Email From Setu...

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• Complaint Feedback Loop for Yahoo & AOL Emails

  Yahoo and AOL run a Complaint Feedback Loop (CFL) service that forwards recipient spam complaints back to the sender. Registering for that service used to be something senders did themselves. Not any more. Act-On handles the registration on your behalf, and there's nothing for you to configure. Who does this: Nobody on your side. Act-On's deliverability infrastructure is already registered Ti...

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• Validating Your Technical Setup

  Once SPF, DKIM, and your marketing domain are published in DNS, it's worth independently verifying that the records are live and correct. The checks below use a free third-party tool called MX Toolbox, which queries public DNS and reports what it finds. If each record comes back green, your setup is live on the internet - not just on paper. Who does this: Marketing or IT, anyone with a browser...

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• BIMI: Brand Indicators for Message Identification

  BIMI - Brand Indicators for Message Identification - is an email standard that lets your company logo appear next to the messages you send, right in the recipient's inbox list. It's an emerging standard with heavyweight backing (Google, Yahoo, Apple) and it rewards senders who already authenticate their mail properly. Who does this: Marketing and Brand own the logo and the decision. IT publish...

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• Subscribing to Abuse Complaints in Google Apps

  If your company runs email on Google Workspace (formerly Google Apps), you can subscribe an inbox to receive abuse and postmaster complaints for your domain automatically. This is a one-time setup inside Google's admin console - not something you do in Act-On - but it's worth knowing about because those complaint addresses are what other mail providers and security teams use to flag problems wi...

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