Websites + Marketing Help

Sending from these addresses will cause bounces

If you try sending marketing emails through Websites + Marketing from a Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Apple Domains (iCloud, Mac and Me), Mail.ru or Verizon email address, you're going to see a lot of bounces. Using one of these addresses as your From address may present you with a warning:

Sending from this email address will cause bounces at most major ISPs and is not recommended.

ISP stands for Internet Service Provider, and means pretty much anyone who provides internet and email inboxes for people.

Even if you don't see that warning, you can't use a Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Apple Domains (iCloud, Mac and Me), Mail.ru or Verizon email address as your From address for any regular campaign, RSS email, autoresponder, or signup form activation message. You need to use a different email address as the From address on any outgoing mailing.

If you don't have another email address handy, you have options. Having your own domain-based email address is one of the best ways to look professional to your customers. And you'll never be at the whim of the free email providers' policy decisions. You can also set up email forwarding right to your old address, to ease the transition to your new one.

The reason you can't use a Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Apple Domains (iCloud, Mac and Me), Mail.ru or Verizon email address is something called a DMARC Validation Policy; something that every email provider has. If that provider changes their policy to p=reject, then you can't use that email address as the From address, except when sending through them.

This means you can't use it as the From address for any email marketing service, like Websites + Marketing. This decision was made by those email providers to reduce abusive behavior, and protect their users.

But remember that the From address on your email marketing mailing is different than your account login email address.

Note: Your account login email can still be a Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Apple Domains (iCloud, Mac and Me), Mail.ru or Verizon email address. This is the email address that we will contact you through, for anything related to your Websites + Marketing account.

What if your domain-based email address has a strict DMARC validation policy?

Due to how DMARC checks for domain alignment, in order to pass DMARC validation when sending through Websites + Marketing, you may need to add in the following records to your Sender domain's DNS.

For SPF:

If your domain currently has an SPF record set-up, you can add include:spf.em.secureserver.net to it.

If you don't have one set up yet, you may need to create a TXT record for yourdomain.com with the value v=spf1 include:spf.em.secureserver.net ~all

It's best to include our SPF info and not individual IP ranges as those could change in the future and may break your email authentication.

For custom DKIM:

Create a CNAME record for sable.cloud._domainkey with the value dkim.cloud.em.secureserver.net

Create a CNAME record for sable.cloud2._domainkey with the value dkim.cloud2.em.secureserver.net

For custom Return-Path:

Create a CNAME record for bounces.cloud.em with the value cbounces.cloud.em.secureserver.net

Create a CNAME record for bounces.cloud2.em with the value cbounces.cloud2.em.secureserver.net

However, if your domain is hosted at GoDaddy, these records may have already been included in your domain's DNS. If they are, no further action is needed.

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