Email and Domain Authentication: Enhance Email Security and Deliverability
May 18, 2022
Your emails matter.
Whether for Sales, Marketing or Service updates, your messages need to reach their intended audience.
However, research shows that nearly 85% of all emails are relegated to spam, joining billions of advertisements, news updates and fraudulent messages on their way to being deleted without ever being opened.
Here’s how you can leverage Caspio’s email and domain authentication to improve email deliverability.
What is Email and Domain Authentication?
Email authentication or verification aims to provide secure and reliable proof that the message came from a legitimate sender. It also involves validating domain ownership with authentication protocols like DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) to ensure the email lands in your recipient’s inbox instead of their spam folder.
Upon authenticating your email and domain inside Caspio, the platform encrypts all your automatic messages with a DKIM signature included in the email header. This serves as the lock that must be decrypted using a key published in your domain name server (DNS). When the receiving email provider verifies that the key matches the signature, it’s more likely to go to the recipient’s inbox.
Top 4 Benefits of Verifying Your Email and Domain
Taking the extra step to verify your email address and domain name unlocks vital benefits for your business, especially if you utilize email as a core part of your operations.
Here are the top reasons why email and domain authentication is worth the effort:
1. Improved deliverability
All leading email providers like Outlook and Gmail detect the DKIM signature of any incoming message as a feature. If you send an email without authentication protocols, there’s a good chance your users will find your messages in their spam. Ensure your email campaigns are delivered straight to the inbox by setting up email and domain verification.
2. Encryption during transit
Protect your users against emails that were altered while in transit from sender to receiver. Automatically encrypt your messages with email and domain verification to make them tamper-proof against malicious entities.
3. Prevents email spoofing
Spoofing is a widely used technique in spam and phishing activities where attackers use forged headers to trick recipients into opening malicious emails. Fraudsters often alter the “From” address into a known sender, such as the company CEO or a reputable third-party business. By verifying your business emails and domains, those receiving your messages are assured that the email was indeed sent by your organization.
4. Adds legitimacy
Email and domain verification also improves your sender reputation among email providers and internet service providers (ISPs). Aside from reducing the number of messages immediately marked as spam, it also lowers email bounce rates. These are essential factors that move the needle in gaining a favorable sender score online.
How to Verify Emails and Domains From Your Caspio Account
Caspio account administrators need to consider two steps to fully enable email and domain verification on the platform:
Step 1: Verify an Email Address
From your Caspio account settings, add a valid email address to the list for verification. You also have the option of including a display name to help users sort out your messages from their inbox. Next, prompt Caspio to send a verification code to your added email. Finally, take the combination of characters you receive and enter it back into your Caspio account to complete the process.
Step 2: Verify a Domain
While domain verification is not required, it’s the step that allows account admins to sign outgoing messages with DKIM and secure the email with encryption. Caspio discourages using public email domains like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail since they can’t be verified and stamped with a DKIM signature.
Completing this step involves configuring your domain’s DNS settings, which may vary depending on your provider (such as GoDaddy). Depending on your domain’s service provider, the entire process can take up to 72 hours. You can monitor the verification status within your Caspio account.
If you want to send verified emails without going through any of the steps above, Caspio provides a pre-verified default email address hosted on a Caspio-owned domain (noreply@caspio.app). This serves as a quick start without requiring you to edit any advanced settings.
As part of our commitment to improving email deliverability, all existing email addresses used with your Caspio apps must be verified by July 11, 2022. Unverified emails will be replaced with noreply@caspio.app after the deprecation date.
Sample Use Cases for Verified Emails and Domains
After completing the setup procedures, feel free to resume ongoing email campaigns or start new initiatives for your organization.
Here are some popular ideas to consider:
Service Requests
For Customer Service teams that deal with external service requests, it’s essential to keep customers updated on the status of their tickets. Set up automated emails triggered by status changes and let customers know if their request is pending, ongoing or completed.
Appointment Scheduling
Send automated acknowledgment emails with every succesfull appointment scheduled using your app. Whether it’s setting up doctor visits on your patient portal or signing up to an upcoming event, ensure your clients get your official confirmation using a verified email and domain.
Document Management
To expedite your document management workflow, make sure the next person in the process receives email notifications as soon as the file is ready for their review. With email and domain verification, all team members receive the alert on their inbox, ensuring they don’t miss critical documents.
Customer Delight
It’s always good to recognize customer milestones within your product or service by sending annual usage statistics, achievement badges and surprise rewards. As an Account Management or Customer Success manager, you can also send timed greetings on birthdays and special holidays to remind your clients that you care about them.
Brand Promotion
Keep your leads, prospects and target audiences engaged with promotional emails that reflect what you do. Provide newsletters that contain product offerings, announcements, exclusive deals, customer stories and more without worrying about the email going to the recipient’s junk folder.
Lead Nurturing
Design and deploy a series of emails from your custom CRM with the express intent of assisting your leads with timely tips and a clear onboarding experience, without relying on live interactions with your dedicated sales team. This particular campaign enables your business to free up resources and close more deals.
Send Your Automated Emails the Right Way
Provide the best email deliverability for your business today.
Use verified email addresses for your campaigns and boost your overall user engagement to get the best return on investment.
Need help enabling our email and domain authentication feature?
Schedule a free project consultation with one of our Caspio specialists today.