by Lisa Norman
Statements I’ve heard recently:
- "I keep getting errors from my friend's Yahoo email. Tell her to fix it!" (hint: Yahoo was refusing the person’s email because they didn’t have it set up right…the problem was not on the receiving end, but on the sending end)
- "Why is MailChimp telling me to do something? What do I DOOOO?" (MailChimp was spitting out alphabet soup… read on to translate)
- "MailerLite just changed everything!" (Yep. MailerLite had to release a new version in order to cope.)
As the resident geek to a herd of authors, I've heard a ton of this over the last month, combined with a lot of existential dread. Over the years, I've come to believe that when writers experience pure tech fear, it's often because the language of geeks puts them into the uncomfortable space of not knowing what words mean.
For writers, not understanding words strikes at something close to our souls. Words are our life, and when words don’t make sense, it can be scary.
Let's translate all the geek into English.
When we get into our cars, we put the key in, and it goes. Or at least we did, then someone developed these new ignition systems, and we just keep the key in our pocket. I don’t know about you, but I still feel weird getting into a car and pushing a button.
Email is something we all use, but we don’t always know how it works. Let’s face it: most of the time, we don’t WANT to know how it works. Until it doesn’t. Then it becomes a problem.
When you send an email, you are sending it from a “server”—a big computer that is always attached to the internet. Usually, we write our emails using a program like Gmail or Outlook, something on our computer. Then it sends the email to the server, which then uses an internet address system to determine where to send the email. That system is referred to as the DNS system, or Domain Name System.
You know about domain names: those are the website addresses that we use, the ones we type into the address bar at the top of the screen.
A cartoon to help:
The domain name system is the part of the internet that keeps track of what physical machine each website lives on. Websites move, and if you move from one hosting company to another, you’ll need to update the DNS so that your followers can still find you. Owning your own domain name gives you a professional appearance and also allows you to control your space.
But the internet is full of killer robots trying to take your site down. They also love to intercept internet traffic in the middle and re-route it or change it. Bad robots!
If you watched that video, you may have noticed that it is old. The DNS system is as old as the internet. In addition to telling where the websites live, the DNS system also has a set of “records”—lines of text that have important information about how that website works. Among them are records that say who is allowed to send email from that domain, where the email should be coming from, and even bits of encryption to keep the information safe in transit!
Understanding the alphabet soup of DNS records
DMARC
DMARC is an acronym for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. Translating from the geek, that means a way to prove that this email comes from you. DMARC tells a person’s email system that you are a professional and that if the system can’t prove that the email came from you, you want it to… “quarantine” (stick it in spam), “reject” (throw it away) or “none” (just go ahead and deliver it, I don’t care). Yeah, we probably don’t want “none.” DMARC also allows you to request a report from each email system telling you what they did with all of your emails. (Fair warning: those emails can be confusing.)
DMARC tells email servers what to do if the email isn’t from us, but how do we prove that an email IS from us?
SPF
Nope, we’re not talking sunscreen. SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. This is the one that says, “this email came from this server, this server is allowed to send things from my domain.”
When a big company’s email server gets an email, it checks to see where that email came from. Then it checks to see who that email says it is from. It checks to make sure that the big web server (hosting machine) is allowed to send email from that person. If the two don’t match, that is an SPF failure. It’ll then look at DMARC to see how you want that handled, but understand: DMARC is a suggestion. Most email servers in our modern environment are now going to say, “nope” and throw it out. It won’t get to spam. That email never existed.
DKIM
DKIM stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail. The important part here is: key. There’s a little bit of encryption added to your email. If the key at the end isn’t the same as the key that is supposed to be there, it means that while the email came from your server, someone grabbed it in transit and messed with it—like someone intercepting a check in the mail and changing it.
DKIM is another test that email servers are using. Email companies use DKIM to prove that your email wasn’t damaged somewhere along the way. Fail the DKIM check and… yep…. you know the drill: “nope” that email gets tossed out.
A DKIM record looks like a secret code. That’s because it is.
Why now?
To be fair, this isn’t new. But over the years, many companies that helped people send out big email lists decided that it was probably too hard for the average person to figure this out. So they had the information available, but they didn’t enforce it.
Enter AI and the dramatic increase in spam over the last year. The email providers are even more tired of spam than you are! Do you know someone who has abandoned an email address because it was getting too much spam? Or someone who just has one email address for all of the spammy stuff and one for their real email? All of that spam wastes time and space. The email providers have decided to do something about it.
Their first step was to start deleting unused email addresses. The next step was to start enforcing the DMARC system.
The goal is to cut down on spam and make email more protected.
You are not alone.
This is where it gets both super-geeky and not nearly as complicated as you might think. If you are sending emails from a wonderful hosting company, they may already have set these for you! This is why I start everyone out by recommending mail-tester.com.
Send an email from the same server as your website is hosted on, and things shouldn’t be too bad.
Finding helpers
AH… but what if you use MailChimp, MailerLite, or some other sending service? This is where the challenge comes in. You need to get those “records” on your server to match up. You need your hosting server to say that it is okay for your email service to send on your behalf.
In your website hosting, there will be a place to set up DNS records. I recommend that you contact your technical support for help here, or get a geek to hold your hand. You’ll need to get the information from your mailing list company and put it into the DNS records on your hosting platform.
This is one of the areas where I’ve really been seeing some of the hosting companies shine the last few weeks. They’re getting swamped with people needing help. But here’s the thing to understand: these geeks have been doing this all day. Your request won’t bother or confuse them.
Support from the various email sending services has also been really good, despite the overload. You may need to be patient to get through, but they should be able to give you the records that you need.
Get the information from your newsletter program, take it to your hosting company or a friendly geek, and they’ll help you get the records in the right place.
Remember: if you are sending from your own website, you may just need to make sure the default records are set up, and some hosting companies have already done it for you. Run mail-tester.com before you panic.
So just getting the records right will fix this?
Well… yes, and no.
If you are sending out a lot of emails, the email companies are looking for a few other hints to make sure you aren’t a spammer.
What do they want? They want people to:
- open your newsletters
- click on a link in your email
- reply to you
According to the official news release, this only applies to those sending over 5000 emails per day, or those who have a reported (spam) rate of over .3%. (Spam reports: those are when people click “spam” at the top when they are reading your email. Note that sometimes the spam button is next to the archive or delete. It is normal to have some spam reports, even if you aren’t sending spam, because people don’t always hit the right button. And no, they don’t realize how much harm they’re doing to their favorite author when they do that!)
But realistically? None of us want to be mistaken for spammers, and I’d like to suggest that if you are sending emails that people don’t want to receive, maybe you ARE actually sending spam.
Best Practices
Go back over my articles on sharable newsletters. Make sure that you are sending out useful emails. Interact with your readers and make sure you’re sending them something they want.
Run mail-tester.com and get your score up above 8/10.
Have a button people can click that will unsubscribe them immediately from your newsletters and be happy when they use it.
Let’s compare notes! How is your email deliverability? Are people getting your emails? Are you having any problems? Have you done anything to get your readers to reply to your emails? What has your experience been?
About Lisa
Lisa Norman's passion has been writing since she could hold a pencil. While that is a cliché, she is unique in that her first novel was written on gum wrappers. As a young woman, she learned to program and discovered she has a talent for helping people and computers learn to work together and play nice. When she's not playing with her daughter, writing, or designing for the web, she can be found wandering the local beaches.
Lisa writes as Deleyna Marr and is the owner of Deleyna's Dynamic Designs, a web development company focused on helping writers, and Heart Ally Books, LLC, an indie publishing firm.
Interested in learning more from Lisa? Sign up for her newsletter or check out her classroom where she teaches social media, organization, technical skills, and marketing for authors!
Top image by Deleyna via Canva