Configure Sender Validation and Email Authentication

Before you create and send email campaigns, it is mandatory to have a validated email address. Sending campaigns from a non-validated email address is not possible. Email Authentication, on the other hand, is not mandatory as long as you have fewer than 5,000 contacts in your subscription, but it is increasingly recommended to improve deliverability.

The following article shows how to add and validate a new sender and create the necessary records to set up email authentication in your domain's DNS configuration.

Validate a new sender address

1. To approve the use of an email address as a sender, go to the Settings > Add or remove senders section of your account.

   

2. To validate a new email address, click on the Add a new sender button. If you have an email address that hasn't been approved yet, a Resend approval email button will appear in front of it. Click on it to request approval again.

   

3. When you click on the Add a new sender button, a pop-up will appear where you can enter a new email address and then click on the Request approval button.

   

4. A confirmation email will be sent to the email address you have entered where the owner of that email address can give their consent to use their address in your Flexmail account.

   

5. Once the owner of the email address has clicked on the Verify my email address button in the confirmation email, a checkmark icon will appear in front of it indicating you can now use that email to create and send email campaigns. 

6. Click on the star button to mark an email address as default. The marked email address will be set as default when creating a new campaign. If you would like to remove an existing email address, click on the Remove sender button to the right of the email address and confirm the removal.

   

Set up email authentication for a domain

1. To set up email authentication, go to the Settings > Add or remove senders section of your account.

   

2. Click on Set up authentication button next to the desired domain.

   

3. A pop-up featuring the DNS records that are needed for email authentication settings will open up. If the box containing the record is coloured green, authentication for your domain has been set to active and you no longer need to take action. If the box featuring the record is coloured red, your domain administrator will need to create the DNS record in question to activate authentication. 
4. The SPF and DMARC record are created automatically and should only be added to the DNS by the domain administrator.

5. The DKIM key needs to be generated first. To achieve that, you need to choose a selector. You can leave the default selector 'flexmail' or change it to the desired name. Click on the Generate DKIM keys button below the selector. 

   

6. Finally, click on Generate report. A TXT file is downloaded automatically. After that, you can forward the report to your domain administrator so that they can make the adjustments in the DNS settings of the domain.

   

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