The Importance of DMARC

Despite the evolution of communication channels, email remains essential for B2C and B2B interactions. From marketing campaigns and customer support to transactional notifications and newsletters, email is crucial for connecting with your audience.

However, your communications program needs DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) and excellent email deliverability to be effective.

As your email volume increases, so does the challenge of ensuring these messages reach your recipients’ inboxes. With the rising tide of spam, promotional content, and phishing attempts, your legitimate business emails risk being ignored, landing in spam, or not being delivered at all.

That’s where DMARC comes in.

Think of DMARC as your email’s passport, verifying its authenticity and ensuring it reaches the inbox. DMARC enhances email security and amplifies your voice in the crowded digital space, ensuring your messages are seen and read.

We will guide you through the relationship between DMARC and email deliverability, providing tools and strategies to secure your emails and improve your delivery rates.

What is Email Deliverability?

Email deliverability is the ability of your emails to reach the intended recipient’s inbox without being blocked or flagged as spam. Factors like sending reputation, opt-ins, engagement, security, trustworthiness, and email content all influence your deliverability.

Imagine sending a letter via traditional mail. You’d want it to reach the recipient’s mailbox. However, if the post office thought you were scamming people or had incorrect addresses, they might not deliver it. In the digital realm, email deliverability ensures your “electronic letter” lands in the primary inbox, not spam or undelivered.

Why Email Deliverability Should Be a Priority

Email deliverability is crucial and becomes more challenging to recover once it goes wrong. Proactive steps to maintain and improve deliverability rates are essential because:

1. Brand Reputation: Consistent email deliverability fosters trust. Emails in the spam folder can tarnish your brand’s reputation, making recipients sceptical of your communications.
2. ROI on Email Campaigns: Deliverability directly impacts ROI. Emails not reaching inboxes mean missed potential conversions and engagements.
3. Effective Communication: Ensure product updates, newsletters, or transactional emails are seen and acted upon.
4. Transactional Delivery: Critical transactional emails, like confirmations and password resets, need to avoid the spam folder or being undelivered.

What is DMARC?

DMARC is a powerful email authentication protocol designed to combat email fraud, ensuring your emails are genuine and untampered with during transit.

• Authentication: DMARC works with DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) and SPF (Sender Policy Framework). DKIM provides a digital signature to verify an email’s source and integrity, while SPF ensures the email originates from an approved server. DMARC uses these methods to authenticate the email.
• Policy Enforcement: DMARC policies instruct email servers on handling unauthenticated emails, allowing them through, quarantining them (sending to spam), or rejecting them outright.
• Reporting: DMARC’s feedback mechanism provides insights into email authentication results, helping refine your email strategy and improve deliverability.

Does DMARC Improve Email Deliverability?

Yes, DMARC significantly enhances email deliverability, with brands often seeing up to a 10% boost after reaching DMARC enforcement. To understand how, consider these challenges:

1. Rising Email Fraud: Phishing and spoofing are rampant, deceiving recipients and damaging the reputation of legitimate brands.
2. Stringent ISP Filters: Strict filtering mechanisms by ISPs sometimes flag genuine emails as spam.
3. Eroding Trust: The prevalence of email-based threats makes recipients wary, leading to lower open rates and engagement.
4. Complex Email Ecosystem: Multiple third-party tools and services complicate consistent deliverability.

DMARC addresses these challenges by ensuring genuine emails from verified domains reach recipients, rebuilding trust, enhancing brand reputation, and making your messages stand out.

How DMARC Improves Your Email Deliverability?

1. Boosted Trust with ISPs: DMARC signals ISPs that your emails are genuine, increasing the likelihood of delivery to the primary inbox.
2. Protection from Spoofing and Phishing: DMARC prevents unauthorized use of your domain, protecting your brand’s reputation.
3. Feedback and Continuous Improvement: DMARC reports help identify and rectify authentication issues, improving email delivery.
4. Enhanced Brand Recognition: With DMARC, you can use BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification), displaying your logo next to emails in the inbox
5. Reduced False Positives: Genuine emails are less likely to be flagged as spam.
6. Improved Engagement Metrics: Higher deliverability leads to better open and click-through rates.
7. Global Reach: DMARC provides consistent deliverability across regions and ISPs.
8. Future-proofing: DMARC evolves with emerging threats, ensuring your strategy remains robust.

Steps to Implement DMARC for Better Deliverability

Ready to implement DMARC? Here’s how:

Manual Implementation

1. Assess Current Email Landscape: Identify all services and tools sending emails on your behalf.
2. Set Up SPF and DKIM: Ensure both are correctly set up for your domain
3. Create a DMARC Record: Define your DMARC policy in your domain’s DNS settings.
4. Start with a Monitoring Policy: Initially set your DMARC policy to “none” to monitor authentication results without affecting deliverability.
5. Analyze Reports: Review DMARC reports to understand authentication results.
6. Refine and Enforce: Gradually tighten your DMARC policy from “none” to “quarantine” and eventually to “reject.”
7. Monitor and Update: Continuously monitor DMARC reports and update your records as needed.

Automated Implementation

Automated solutions simplify DMARC implementation by identifying all services and tools sending emails on your behalf, setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC with ease, providing real-time insights, guiding policy enforcement, and maintaining compliance as your business evolves.

Get Started with DMARC Enforcement

Whether you’re new to DMARC or looking to enforce stricter policies, RealBytes provides the tools and expertise you need. Let us help you ensure your emails reach the inbox and protect your brand’s reputation. Get in touch with RealBytes today and take the first step towards better email deliverability!