Authenticating your domain

If you have spent anytime on the Deliverability Center of your Amplemarket account you may have seen that your mailbox has failed authentication. This is a reflection of your current domain settings and if your domain has not been authenticated, it could have negative effects on the deliverability of your emails. In this article we will be covering the steps to authenticate the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC settings for your domain. 

To authenticate your SPF, please follow the directions below. 

1. Sign in to your domain account on your domain host's site (not your Google Admin Console). This can be GoDaddy, Squarespace, Namecheap, etc.

2. Go to the page for updating your domain’s DNS records. DNS Management, Name Server Management, or Advanced Settings.

3. Find your TXT records and check if your domain has an existing SPF record. The SPF record starts with “v=spf1…”.
4. If your domain already has an SPF record, remove it.
5. Create a TXT record with these values:

• Name/Host/Alias - Enter @ or leave blank
• Time to Live (TTL) - Enter 3600 or leave the default.
• Value/Answer/Destination - Enter v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all.

Please note that these records can take up to 48 hours to have an effect. 

To authenticate your DKIM settings, please follow these instructions. 

1. Log in to Google Admin: admin.google.com
2. In the navigation menu on the left-hand side menu > Apps > GSuite > Gmail
3. Generate a DKIM Key

4. Create a DNS TXT Record with the DKIM key generated in the previous step. For this, you will need to go to your domain provider. e.g. GoDaddy, Squarespace, Namecheap, etc.

5. After creating the DNS TXT record in your domain with the DKIM Key, you can start Authenticating.

The last setting we need to authenticate is DMARC and we can do this by following the steps below: 

1. Go to your domain administrator’s site. Find DNS Management or Settings.
2. Add this TXT record to your DNS:

• Host Name: _dmarc

• VALUE (with email): v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; rua=mailto:{email}; pct=90; sp=none.

  The email version will send reports to whatever email you put in there. This is totally optional and if you do not wish to receive reports on your domain you can enter the following value. 

• VALUE (no email): v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; pct=90; sp=none

After completing the steps above you can test the authentication of the domain by heading to your deliverability center, clicking on the "failed" banner, and refreshing the pop-up that will appear. If you have any other questions about authenticating your domain please reach out to [e-mail]