What the email?!

Does this sound familiar?

“My newsletter program says I have to authenticate my email. They said it’s easy, but I don’t understand!”
or
“Recently, I checked my spam folder and found a lot of email that shouldn’t be there. They didn’t used to go to spam.“

What’s going on?: Google and Yahoo announced new authentication requirements for email earlier this month (February 2024.) Other email providers already have these policies or will soon!

What does that mean? Why you should care. If a business is using an email that’s not setup properly, their email will go to customers spam boxes or just bounce back. If you’re using a free email service (such as gmail, yahoo, hotmail, aol, ec) then there’s nothing you need to do. But if you’re using a paid email service (such as Google Workspace or Microsoft,) then you need to make sure your email is setup properly. Those sending newsletters also need to be aware of new requirements.

Here at CeJay Websites, we’ve spent the last week helping customers setup authentication.

Here’s a video showing you how to authenticate your email:

We have made a step-by-step video for you, or scroll down to read the instructions!

Here are some signs that your email isn’t authenticated/setup properly:

You get a lot of “undeliverable” messages, especially from a certain email provided, like aol, yahoo or gmail
Customers have complained they’re not receiving your email messages, but they can email you
Email to customers are going to their spam folders
It just seems like a lot of email aren’t getting delivered to the customer

Here’s a description of all the acronyms

DKIM: The main purpose of DKIM is to prevent spoofing. Email spoofing is changing the original message’s content and sending it from an alternative sender that looks like a trusted source. [read tchnical details here]

SPF: Tell’s the recipients email program that your email is OK and safe to read by checking it against a list of bad senders. [read technical details here]

DMARC: Defines what percentage of your incoming email should be checked for poper DKIM and SPF and what to do if they don’t pass. [read technical details here]

DNS are instructions for servers. It tells “the web” how to find your website and how to send/receive your email. It contains all kinds of records that make it possible for email to send and your website to work. DNS updates are a common task for web developers, but advanced editing is typically done by IT professionals. At CeJay Website we have the basic and advanced knowledge needed to edit DNS for your website and email. [read technical details here]

What you can do

The best thing to do is contact your favorite computer expert or your website designer. Not all web designers and computer geeks are familiar with DNS. Feel free to reach out to us if you need help. CeJay Websites has been handling DNS records for years and continually expand our knowledge. Call us at (941) 916-2555 for fast assistance.