Proving Yourself: The Need to Authenticate

The movement towards authentication continues more and more as senders struggle with delivery problems and inbox placement challenges.  Last week I attended the fall session of a conference where many industry leaders gathered to discuss email marketing. I had three key takeaways: authentication, authentication, authentication.  In all seriousness, authentication is a topic which is still gaining momentum and strength, which was reaffirmed at this conference. Both the sender and receiver community are on the same page on the importance of authenticating each email.

While authentication doesn’t guarantee delivery or inbox results, it is a factor in which the ISPs will use in their reputation scores to determine where your emails ends up.   You must have authentication first before you can have reputation and since DKIM makes it easier for the receivers to identify who is sending the message, they are able to attach a reputation (good or bad) to a sender. Going back to a great example used many times in that authentication is your driver’s license which says who you are, but doesn’t provide your driving behavior. Whereas your driving record is where your reputation is, it tells the whole story.  Receivers have to first identify correctly who the senders are, then they can start to create a track record for them. To best do this, emails need to be signed with DKIM. Many of the larger ISPs are checking for DKIM and may offer preferable reputation when determining where the inbound emails go.

Additionally, as the receivers move towards domain reputation, signing emails with a DKIM signature creates and establishes a reputation with the receivers which is why it is so important to maintain a consistency in what domain you use in your emails.  You should authenticate the emails with the domain from the brand and not from the ESP.

Not being authenticated won’t necessarily have a negative effect on your deliverability but if you are authenticating your emails, you will see benefits that will help you.  If we are seeing positive effects from using DKIM, it's working. To help your deliverability, to your part to use DKIM.

Chris Kolbenschlag
Director of Deliverability at Bronto