You're paying for tools like Lemlist or Instantly, but if your emails go to spam, it’s like shouting into the void.
Even the best campaign can’t save you if no one reads your emails.
What you need is to set up email authentication methods like SPF that make your emails more secure and far more likely to land in the inbox.
If OVH is your domain provider, we’ll show you how to set up an SPF record on OVHcloud today.
Your record will normally propagate within a few hours.
However, sometimes, DNS changes can take up to three days.
You can use a tool like MXToolbox to verify the status of your record.
Alternatively, you can use Mailivery’s DNS Status meter to check if your record is good to go.
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The status indicator next to SPF will turn green if you’ve configured your SPF record correctly.
If after waiting for a day or two, your SPF record is still not working…
Let’s double-check its syntax.
You see, even the slightest error or typo, like an additional space, can render your record useless.
Use Mailivery’s free SPF Syntax checker below to ensure your record’s syntax is in order:
The way regular email works makes it super easy for criminals to pretend to send email from a trusted domain. This is called email spoofing.
These bad guys use email spoofing to launch phishing attacks and other scams.
SPF, which stands for Sender Policy Framework, aims to prevent this by letting you decide what email servers can send from your domain. You can specify this in an SPF record.
Receiving email servers can then check your SPF record, and if the email comes from servers that are not in your record, it will fail authentication.
An SPF record is a DNS TXT record. It looks like a line of code.
Here’s another example:
v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all
In the example above, Google’s servers are authorized to send from the domain.
Authorized servers always go into the include tag. In some cases, IP numbers are used to authorize servers. In that case, you use an ipv4 or ipv6 tag, depending on the type of IP number.
The other two components of the SPF record above are v=spf1 (the SPF version number - it’s always v=spf1) and the all mechanism.
All tags define the policy for emails that fail authentication. The two most frequently used all tag settings are:
All tags do not necessarily get the last say on what happens with unauthorized emails. Server configuration and DMARC records (another email security protocol) can override SPF’s recommendations and determine whether to reject, quarantine, or allow the message to pass through.
Setting up SPF is a good step toward better inbox placement for your cold emails.
However, SPF is part of a trio of email authentication protocols that form the frontline defense against phishing and spoofing. The other two are DKIM and DMARC.
DKIM checks if your emails have been tampered with during transit, and DMARC lets you decide what to do with unauthorized emails.
Together, these three email security methods make your emails much more secure, which is what email service providers love.
Your reward for implementing them? Better open rates!
After setting up your email authentication records, it’s time to warm up your email.
What is email warm-up?
It's the process of gradually increasing the number of emails you send to establish a sender reputation while also getting engagement for your emails. This leads to even better inbox placement.
If you start sending 100s of daily emails from a domain without a sender reputation, they will go to the spam folder( if you're lucky, and they don't get rejected outright).
Email service providers don’t know you and will not let your avalanche of emails stalk their users' inboxes.
Instead, to reach them, you need to build up your sender reputation slowly. This is what email warm-up is all about.
Mailivery automates this warm-up process, using AI-powered email interactions to and from a network of 30,000 other Mailivery users.
It also provides comprehensive analytics (where are your warm-up emails landing) and blacklist monitoring for your domain.
Try Mailivery’s Starters plan free for 7 days.
Need to Set Up SPF on Another Domain Provider?
We can also help you to:
The easiest way to get responses to your cold emails.
