Introduction I have a fair bit of experience dealing with email deliverability issues, web/mail server configuration, and DNS setup. I thought it'd be nice to give back to the DP community, since I've learned so much useful information from here over the years. So...here's part one of my "Improving your Email Deliverability" series What is SPF? Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email validation system which aims at reducing spam by ensuring that emails are being sent from valid IPs. Domain administrators simply specify which hosts/IPs are allowed to send email by creating SPF (TXT) DNS records. Why is it important? By setting up SPF for your domain, you increase your "sender reputation" (basically how "legit" your domain and IP are in the eyes of mail providers and ISPs), which reduces the chance that your emails will be flagged as Spam. How do I set it up? I send emails from my own server Open spfwizard.net Follow the steps to generate the SPF DNS entry; copy it to your clipboard Whichever company manages your DNS (typically your domain registrar): Either log in and add an SPF or TXT record that contains the text you copied in Step 2 Or if you’re unsure how to do this, contact your domain registrar support I send emails using a service like MailChimp or AWeber Your mail service should provide instructions on how to set up SPF. It's unique for each service because the DNS TXT entry includes the IPs or hostnames of their sending servers. To find these instructions, you can try Googling for "your-service-name SPF". Here's some examples: http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/authentication-for-mailchimp https://help.aweber.com/entries/21761628-Does-AWeber-Use-SPF-Authentication- Hope this helps you guys improve your delivery rates!
Thanks for the tip. I assume that this would have zero impact if you are using a mailing service like Constant Contact, MailChimp, etc.?
@jrbiz actually, SPF can still be setup for those services, and it should still be beneficial for your delivery rates. But you bring up a good point, there's other email authentication methods (like DKIM) that you can only setup on your own web/mail server. Here's some useful instructions: https://community.constantcontact.c...ecord-setting-for-Constant-Contact/td-p/15090 http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/authentication-for-mailchimp