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My boss wants to send a marketing e-mail to a large group of our customers. I personally feel that it's outside of our core business and don't support it, but that's about all I can do.

Normally the e-mail marketer uses their domain to send from - @somedomain.com

Boss wants it to come from ours, or maybe our .net, or .org that we don't actively use for e-mail. I'm thinking there has to be something if we let them use @ourcompany.org to send from that would need to be done with SPF records (at least) so that our DNS authorizes their SMTP server to send on our behalf. Since I've been overruled on this, it's now my main concern to protect our primary domain that sends all of our transactional e-mail. I'd be happiest if we had nothing to do with it and they sent using their domain, but I'm not sure of the technical argument to make other than it feels wrong.

Steve
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2 Answers2

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First of all, if you can, use a mass mailing service. There are plenty of them out there with various features and prices. Most don't cost very much. They will deal with things like managing people unsubscribing from lists, ensuring you are compliant with various anti spam legislation around the world, getting their servers off of blacklists, and give you tools to make your emails pretty. They aren't very expensive, and rolling your own (and doing it properly) is time consuming.

You are right to be concerned about protecting your primary domain - getting your email servers on a blacklist is not fun at all, and it can happen even if everyone signed up and agreed to your mailings.

Luckily, most blacklists block the email server, not the domain - so if you are sending through a third party, it's their servers that get blocked. Blacklists that block domains are much more careful about who they add - because any enemy could forge your domain on their spam and get you blacklisted.

Any decent mass emailing service will have instructions on how to setup DKIM and SPF records for the domain to allow them to send emails on your behalf. MailChimp* for example has a several pages and videos on how to setup your domain properly. Some people choose to use a separate domain for this, just do they don't have to mess around with their primary domain's settings.

If you do decide to send the emails from your own servers, using another domain won't help much - it's the IP address of your mail servers that gets blacklisted.

Grant
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  • I use Sendgrid for our regular transaction and account e-mails and with sending about 2.5M / year I'm proud of my 96.18% reputation score! I do not want this project going near that. This marketing company has, or uses their own sending service. My boss just doesn't like their sending domain so wants to use something closer to ours. – Steve Nov 25 '14 at 19:04
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I'm not sure it's technically necessary (as in things might work even if you don't make changes), but the two areas I would be modifying to accomodate this request are SPF and DKIM records. Alternately, you could try requesting that the third party send from their domain but use a reply-to of your domain.

John
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  • Am I correct though that receiving servers are going to look at the from:something@domain.com and then try to match up the sending IP to see if it's allowed to send for @domain.com? That's they way I understand it to work. – Steve Nov 25 '14 at 19:06
  • That's how I understand it to work, as well. Honestly, though, I think @Grant has the better answer - use a mass mailing service that has experience with this type of thing. Whether that's feasible or not based on your comment to his answer, I can't say, but it's the choice I would try to go with. – John Nov 25 '14 at 19:09