Improve Email Deliverability: Ensure a Solid and Secure Infrastructure

Enhance the security and deliverability of your emails with effective authentication. This article explores key methods for verifying the authenticity of your communications, including SPF, DKIM, ARC, DMARC, and BIMI, and offers strategies for optimal IP address management.
Sophie Jean Saint Julien
18 April 2024
Blog
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Délivrabilité email: Garantir une infrastructure solide et sécurisée

The integrity and security of email communications are paramount for businesses and individuals alike. Ensuring that emails not only reach their intended recipients but also maintain their trust and legitimacy involves a complex array of authentication strategies and protocols.

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the essential practices and technologies required to establish a robust and secure email infrastructure. From basic authentication methods to advanced techniques for managing IP addresses and ramping up email volumes, the following sections will guide you through the crucial steps needed to enhance your email deliverability and protect your communications from common threats such as phishing and spoofing. This guide offers valuable insights and practical advice to secure your email ecosystem effectively.

Email Authentication

Authentication plays a crucial role in confirming your identity as a legitimate sender to email service providers. It relies on several standards that automatically validate the authenticity of your communications. Here are the key methods for authenticating your sending domain:

SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Confirms that the sender is on the approved list of the domain, ensuring that the emails come from an authorized source.

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Uses a public key infrastructure to validate the integrity and origin of messages, enhancing trust in their authenticity.

ARC (Authenticated Received Chain): Maintains the authenticity of messages even in case of forwarding or manipulation, ensuring the validation of communications, including for large volumes or redirected messages.

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): Verifies that the domain visible to the end-user is authenticated via SPF and/or DKIM, providing an additional layer of security.

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification): Offers domain holders the option to choose which image will represent their authenticated messages in the recipients’ inbox, thus enhancing brand recognition.

Implementing and maintaining these authentication protocols is essential to ensure that your emails effectively reach the inboxes, while also strengthening the security and trust around your communications.

Monitor Your Authentication Settings

SPF

SPF is an authentication standard designed to verify the origin of emails and confirm their authenticity, thus helping to reduce the distribution of unwanted emails. This protocol also plays a crucial role in phishing prevention, by linking your IP addresses to the sending domains to limit identity spoofing attempts.

DKIM

DKIM provides a message signing system, using a pair of cryptographic keys (public and private) to authenticate the sender. The details of this signature are found in the email headers. This authentication standard is indispensable for protecting a brand or sender against impersonations and spam, by ensuring the integrity and authenticity of the sent message.

ARC

This protocol complements the SPF and DKIM mechanisms by preserving the authentication information of email messages across multiple hops (transfers). ARC helps to maintain the verification of emails even when they pass through rerouting services, thus supporting the authenticity of messages in complex transmission scenarios.

DMARC

DMARC is a crucial protocol for domain protection in email marketing, designed to combat threats such as phishing and identity spoofing via email. This system relies on a correct setup of the SPF and DKIM protocols to function. For an email to pass DMARC validation, it must comply with either SPF or DKIM compliance.

If an email fails this verification, DMARC guides email service providers on how to handle the message through specific policies.

3 types of actions can be indicated via these policies:

  • None: basic policy for DMARC. This is about ensuring the legitimacy of the sent emails. It is advised to implement this configuration during the setup of the protocol.
  • Quarantine: this intermediate solution offers a certain level of protection as it indicates to send the emails to the junk mail folder. This is about verifying before trusting.
  • Reject: this policy, more radical and maximum in terms of brand protection, allows blocking frauds using emails (phishing, spoofing, etc.). Messages, depending on the validation or not of the sender’s identity, can be rejected.

BIMI

BIMI is a recent standard that facilitates the visual identification of the sender in the user’s inbox, by allowing the display of a specific logo. This standard was developed by a consortium of major email players (such as Google, Microsoft, and Verizon) with the dual objective of ensuring the authenticity of received emails and improving the user experience by immediate recognition of the sender. BIMI relies on a robust authentication infrastructure, ensuring that only verified emails can benefit from this visual enhancement.

IP Address Management

Managing IP addresses is a fundamental element in assessing your email campaigns by internet service providers (ISPs). IP address configurations can vary, each offering specific advantages and disadvantages to consider. Understanding these nuances is essential for optimizing the deliverability of your emails and maintaining a good reputation with ISPs.

Sending Domains/IP Environment

Shared Domain/Mutualized IPs:

Difficult control: Sharing the same set of IPs with other advertisers makes it difficult to distinguish your own sending performance. Similarly, using a shared domain—used by other senders—prevents having a distinction of one’s own performance.

Shared Domain/Dedicated IPs:

Partially controlled reputation: Although the infrastructure may be dedicated, the reputation is influenced by the behaviors of other users sharing the same domain, making the control over the reputation only partial.

Dedicated Domain/Mutualized IPs:

Reputation under shared influence: Owning an exclusive domain does not completely isolate the reputation from that of other users potentially sharing the same set of IPs. Vigilance remains necessary.

Dedicated Domain/Dedicated IPs:

Complete control over the reputation: With a domain exclusively assigned, the management of the reputation rests entirely on your own sending practices. This configuration ensures total sovereignty,

with the brand’s actions being the only factors directly impacting the reputation.

Strategy for Gradual Ramp-Up for Your IP Addresses

To start on a good foundation, it is essential to adopt a strategy of gradual ramp-up for your IP addresses. This methodical approach involves gradually increasing the volume of emails sent from new IPs. The goal is to demonstrate to email service providers the reliability and legitimacy of your sends over time. This allows messaging operators to observe and assess the quality of your content, your sending practices, and the responses from your recipients. These elements contribute to establishing a solid and reliable reputation, thus increasing the likelihood that your emails will be delivered to the inbox and not classified as spam.

The importance of this approach also lies in the fact that evaluation criteria can vary from one provider to another. Some may apply stricter standards, making it essential to consult their specific recommendations to tailor your actions accordingly.

Adhering to best practices for IP warming is crucial. This includes, for example, sending emails to recipients who have already shown active interest, while avoiding purchased or rented email lists, a practice discouraged by organizations such as the National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL). Finally, a rigorous follow-up of deliverability indicators and the reputation of your IPs during this initial phase is recommended to ensure the success of your email campaigns.

How to Develop a Plan to Gradually Increase the Volume of Emails

Developing a plan to gradually increase the volume of emails requires meticulous attention to maintain optimal deliverability and avoid performance issues. It is important to consider several elements to frame and secure your migration best. From analyzing previous results to structuring the future, following a well-defined path and respecting each phase carefully is essential.

Before the Migration

Infrastructure Evaluation: Identify the ideal infrastructure (dedicated IP, shared IP, subdomains, etc.) suited to the volume of emails you plan to send. These elements are important to consider in order to plan this change best.

Analysis of Current Performance: Study the metrics of your existing campaigns (delivery rate, open rate, click rate, complaints, etc.) to establish clear objectives.

Planning for Gradual Increase: Plan to increase your sending volume gradually, for example, by 10 to 20% per week, to measure its impact on deliverability.

Defining Future Goals: Set specific goals for this ramp-up, such as expanding your subscriber base, launching new campaigns, or expanding into new market segments.

Anti-Spam Compliance: Ensure that your methods comply with current regulations (e.g., GDPR, Law 25), include an easy unsubscribe option, and rely on explicit consent.

During the Migration

Selective Integration and Database Purification: Although long-term inactive contacts should generally not be included in a migration, a limited number can be selected, according to specific criteria, for meticulous integration. In reality, the migration process offers the opportunity to purify the database thanks to the preparation carried out in advance for the ramp-up plan.

Quality of Content: Ensure that your emails are relevant, engaging, and aligned with your subscribers’ expectations to minimize the risks of being marked as spam.

Monitoring Key Indicators: Closely observe delivery rates, complaint rates, and open rates, and be prepared to intervene quickly if necessary.

Emergency Plan: Have a rapid action protocol in place to stop sending, reduce the volume of sending, or contact messaging operators if deliverability issues arise.

After the Migration

Continuous Evaluation: Continue analyzing and optimizing your email sending strategies. Take into account subscriber feedback to adjust your approach.

By following these steps, you will be able to manage the increase in email volume effectively, ensuring high deliverability and maintaining customer satisfaction.

Example of a Gradual Ramp-Up Plan for Your IP Addresses

Define Deadlines:

It is crucial to structure the ramp-up by defining a precise schedule. Determine the necessary duration, with a specific number of weeks, and set the corresponding dates. This temporal organization will help you orchestrate your sends effectively and methodically.

Define Sending Days:

For an effective ramp-up, it is recommended to schedule regular sends, ideally daily, to maintain a constant presence on the IPs. However, the requirements of the marketing calendar may sometimes limit the availability of content suitable for such frequency.

Specify Sending Volumes:

Accurately assessing the volumes of emails to be sent is essential for a controlled and progressive deployment on your IP infrastructures. It is appropriate to specify the daily sending volume planned, which will facilitate tracking and assessing the impact of the ramp-up. Taking into account the specifics of major email service providers can also be beneficial for refining your strategy.

Select Appropriate Sending Domains

Choosing the sending domain is crucial for securing and authenticating your emails, directly influencing the deliverability and recipients’ trust in your brand. Using your main domain should reflect your company’s identity and ensure continuity with the services you offer. For example, if your website is accessible via mycompany.com, it seems natural to adopt a shipping address such as email@mycompany.com to maintain this consistency.

For easier management of DNS records and better authentication, it is advisable to set up a

subdomain dedicated to email sends, such as news.mycompany.com. This practice not only allows for a clear segmentation of your communications but also simplifies technical tracking and authentication.

Consistency in the use of your sending domain is essential. Frequently changing the domain or sending address can arouse the suspicions of anti-spam filters, damaging the reputation of your domain.

Find out how your company can benefit from Dialog Insight.

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