Any email marketer knows the importance of landing an email in an inbox. It’s perhaps the most essential step in developing relationships with your contacts, as you can’t exactly deliver your brand message if your email first doesn’t reach them.
Email deliverability is, therefore, crucial and one of the best ways you can improve it is by leveraging email authentication protocols.
What is an Email Authentication Protocol?
Just like the name suggests, an email authentication protocol is a method of confirming yourself as a legitimate sender. It reduces the probability of email address forgery and the chances of phishing emails making their way through to subscribers.
In essence, senders use email authentication protocols to verify that malicious external forces haven’t compromised the messages they send.
Authenticating the validity of emails has increasingly become a necessity nowadays, mainly due to the growing number of spam and phishing exploits. There are several protocols available, and most inbox providers use a number of them to check the authenticity of messages before allowing them to reach their intended inboxes.
Why Use Email Authentication Protocols?
Using email authentication protocols is crucial for marketers and senders because it helps show email service providers that their messages come from legitimate sources.
Incorporating email authentication protocols in their strategy should be of utmost concern for those who value the security and authenticity of their brand.
The two most common reasons why you’d want to apply such protocols are:
Reason #1: To Improve Your Brand Reputation
There’s a good chance your contacts will be wary of your emails if they don’t trust your brand in the first place. This is especially true with the rampant cybercrime, spam, and digital attacks that have been going on in the past few years.
On the bright side, senders can leverage email authentication protocols that will help ensure their messages land at their appropriate destinations while securing their reputation. Email service providers and internet service providers (ISPs) will also take notice of the positivity in your sender reputation. They will trust your IP address and domain address more when you send emails.
Reason #2: To Improve Email Deliverability
Another benefit of using at least one email authentication protocol is to increase the chances of your messages reaching your subscribers’ inboxes. When these protocols aren’t in place, there’s a good chance your emails will be rejected or sent directly to the spam folder.
Email service providers and ISPs will see you as a trusted sender to their clients with proper email authentication. An increase in trust from these entities often means an improvement in email deliverability as a whole.
Email message deliverability plays a huge part in email marketing as it basically determines how often your emails land at their target destinations. That’s why you must apply email authentication, as it ensures your messages will reach your subscribers.
How Does Email Authentication Work?
As you already know, email authentication is available through various protocols, with each one having its pros and cons. Besides how they operate from a technical standpoint, these protocols work similarly.
Here’s how they generally operate:
- You decide on an authentication protocol and set up a policy informing email service providers and ISPs how they can authenticate your IP and domain owner details.
- You configure the proper infrastructure so that mail servers have a way to verify and implement the rules of your policy.
- Each time a receiving mail server receives a message from your IP addresses, it checks your policy and carries out your pre-defined rules.
- The mail server decides whether they will reject, quarantine, or do nothing to the incoming email.
Having these technical standards in place is essential as they provide a clear direction on what the receiving server does to messages they receive from senders. By defining a common approach, organizations can set up their policies to inform servers what they should do in case of potential forgery.
The process only works when both the sender and receiver agree to cooperate. Senders that use any email authentication protocols available ultimately lead to increased confidence and trust.
Types of Email Authentication Protocols
The standards in email authentication are made to confirm the identity of the sender after an email is sent. This helps in verifying whether or not the message came from a legitimate source or not.
At this time, there are four types of email authentication protocols available for senders to use. These are:
Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
Sender Policy Framework, commonly known as SPF, is the oldest authentication protocols used to verify email sources. It works by providing users with a DNS record that identifies potential email spoofing.
This record contains a list of all IP addresses that are approved to send emails. Such an approach prevents spammers from forging your email address to deceive your subscribers.
Furthermore, SPF helps mail servers determine if an IP address is safe or not. Failing the check often means being labeled as spam.
When configuring SPF email authentication, senders can select all of the email addresses that are allowed to send messages using your domain address. Both mail servers and ISPs will enforce the SPF policy and the rules to identify a potential scammer.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
The second type of email authentication protocol is DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). This protocol works by allowing inbox providers to see whether the content of an email has been modified during transit. It also has a DKIM record similar to SPF that shows all IP addresses that are allowed to send emails.
The DKIM authentication protocol takes advantage of cryptographic techniques that allow mailbox providers and ISPs to validate the identity of a domain and its association with a given email. It does this through a pair of encrypted digital keys that add a unique signature to each email.
When email servers receive a message, it validates the authenticity of a sender by verifying the DKIM signature. It also uses the digital signature as a basis to see if the email was altered along the way. In short, messages that come with DKIM signatures guarantee their authenticity.
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, & Conformance (DMARC)
The third type of email authentication available today is called Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance or DMARC. Besides operating as a way to authenticate emails, it also lets users set a policy while providing reports.
DMARC can help thwart malicious attempts such as phishing attacks and domain spoofing by not allowing the use of a domain address when the sender is unauthorized to do so. The protocol checks a form where all the email and IP addresses authorized are listed.
Additionally, DMARC lets domain owners provide instructions on what mailbox providers should do to messages that fail their checks. A pre-determined authentication policy found in the DNS record of the protocol helps with this.
Users can choose from 3 options when setting their policy, these are:
- None: This policy tells the mailbox provider to take no action on failed messages and continue to accept them as they are.
- Quarantine: The quarantine policy instructs providers to send email messages from a specific sender directly to the quarantine, spam, or junk folder.
- Reject: This last policy informs providers to reject any message that fails the DMARC check immediately.
Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI)
Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is one of the newest email authentication protocols to verify a sender’s legitimacy. It works by showing subscribers your brand’s logo as they arrive in their inboxes.
There are at least two reasons for this. The first is that displaying company logos can improve brand recognition and increase the probability of contacts opening messages due to the visual association. The second is that it also works as a security function. When a logo is shown next to an email, it validates your reputation to subscribers and lets them know that your message isn’t forged.
Just like the other email authentication protocols, BIMI works by creating a link between the sender’s domain and the subscriber’s email provider. Each time the recipient’s email client gets their message, it goes through the sender’s BIMI record to find the details of displaying a specific logo in the email.
Each email provider will have different ways of carrying out this process. However, the main point here is that a company’s logo is shown next to its email as soon as the BIMI record has been confirmed.
Senders can start using BIMI once they have set up their SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols.
How Email Authentication Protocols Protect Your Sender Reputation
As mentioned above, email authentication protocols help protect sender reputation through various means. Senders who follow the best practices in this aspect can reap a lot of benefits.
Here are some of the primary ways you can keep your email reputation intact:
Significantly Reduces the Possibility of Spoofing
Stopping email spoofing may not be one of the main responsibilities of a sender. In fact, it’s not part of your job at all.
However, good email practice dictates that you should stop subscribers from being scammed as much as possible. This means doing everything in your control to prevent spoofing from happening.
Additionally, customers can easily be tempted to believe that you should be doing something to counteract phishing scams. Leaving these cybercriminals to go about their nefarious deeds can be harmful to your brand and sender reputation. This is especially true since recipients who are aware of these techniques will be warier in opening legitimate emails.
Prevent Trust Erosion Among Subscribers
Today, brands that have proven to provide their customers with tried and tested digital security are often trusted more than those that don’t. This is particularly essential given the rampant cybersecurity threats lingering around on the internet.
Cybercriminals that operate phishing and spoofing email tactics exploit people’s trust in a brand. When you leave these attempts unattended, users will be more distrustful of your brand. After all, why would a company allow such deception to continue without consequences?
When you can contribute to preventing these malicious emails from reaching your subscribers’ inboxes, you help put a stop to the erosion of trust in your brand. Using email authentication protocols can, therefore, improve your standing among recipients and mailbox providers, and thus, increase your sender reputation.
Enhances Your Campaign’s Email Deliverability
Using the various email authentication standards can directly and positively affect you’re your deliverability metrics. This is possible because email servers can immediately confirm your identity and see that your messages are legitimate.
But when you fail to use email authentication, there’s a good chance your emails will find themselves sent to the spam folder. Some messages may even be outright rejected by the mailbox providers, thereby harming your sender reputation.
Stops Hackers and Scammers from Succeeding
There really isn’t a valid reason why an email sender should choose to bypass using these authentication protocols. Every email marketing campaign should have at least one or two of these security standards in place, especially because of the huge problem with cybersecurity nowadays.
Using email authentication will provide your campaigns with an added defense against hackers and scammers that will do what it takes to exploit the trust that recipients have in your brand.
How to Get Started With Email Authentication?
According to SparkPost, if your SaaS application sends email, you need to implement one or more forms of email authentication to verify that an email is actually from your product.
Applying at least the three main protocols of email authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) is a good starting point in protecting your domain. However, each of these standards take time to set up properly. You also need to know how each one works to maximize their potential.
One of the easiest ones to get started with is Sender Policy Framework or SPF. From there, you can get DKIM and then add DMARC for even better protection against spoofing.
If you want to make the most of your email authentication, you should leverage BIMI since it helps prevent phishing and improves your brand recognition.
Is There an Alternative to Email Authentication?
There’s simply no alternative to the email authentication protocols available today. Email authentication itself is a unique approach that is designed to protect both email senders and receivers from spoofing and phishing attempts.
You can find tools that let you set up, monitor, and protect your email reputation to some extent. They can also be used in tandem with your existing authentication protocols to improve their effectiveness.
However, there’s simply no overlooking the impact email authentication can have on senders. There’s no reason to skip it, as it’s considered a standard practice in email marketing.
Conclusion
Email authentication protocols are here to stay, and there’s no way to get around them. Cybercriminals abound on the internet, and they will use everything in their power to get what they want.
Subscribers are among the most targeted users today especially given how they easily trust messages coming from brands they like. Although it isn’t your responsibility to protect them, it can be extremely beneficial for you to ensure they aren’t scammed by setting up the email authentication standards.
At this time, there are four available email authentication protocols to choose from. These are:
- Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
- DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
- Domain-based Authentication, Reporting, & Conformance (DMARC)
- Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI)
Using even one of these standards can significantly improve your chances of landing in your recipients’ inboxes. However, using a combination of these protocols, or even all of them at once, is even better.
Having a better understanding of how email authentication works and how it affects your sender reputation is important as an email marketer. The information and tips provided in this guide should give you the details you need to start setting up your email campaigns for success.
