Email Sending Domains

In version 10.11, we've added the ability for customers to add and setup their own email sending domains which sets DKIM signing and your Return Path domain to align with your From: domain. For more details regarding DKIM and its setup, please see our article here. To begin setting up your email domains, you will first need to navigate to the ClickDimensions Settings page and select the "Email Sending Domains" option:

This will open the Email Sending Domains area where you can add, edit, and delete your email domains as well as check on their status:

Adding Email Sending Domains

If you create a new Email Domain, then you will see the following screen:

1. Domain: This is the sending domain that you would like to send from. For example: yourcompany.com, where you want to send from any address @yourcompany.com
2. DKIM Subdomain: This is subdomain that you would like to use when sending. Please note that this is only the sub-part of the domain. For instance, if your full sub-domain was "email.yourcompany.com", then you would only enter "email" into this field. Your chosen subdomain needs to be unique to ClickDimensions and not reserved for other ESPs or purposes; be a valid subdomain with no leading or trailing punctuation symbols in the label; and be different from your Email, Web Content, and Social CNAMEs if you have any set up.
3. Email CNAME: This is an optional field that will allow you to set a CNAME for this domain. For more details about setting up Email CNAMEs, please see our article here. Like the DKIM Subdomain this is not the FQDN, but simply the label(s) for the Email CNAME subdomain. The DKIM and Email CNAME subdomains cannot use the same label.
4. Contact Email: This is the email address that we will contact if there are issues when authenticating the domain. We highly recommend you place the email address of a monitored mailbox here.

After entering these details and saving, the window will expand to show the DNS records that will need to be setup in your Domain's DNS zone settings - a possible change to your organizational domain's SPF record, two new MX records, and five new TXT records. After setting up the DNS records for the domain, the Export to Text File will allow you to export your DNS records for that domain to a .text file to double check them or share them within your organization.

Important notes for your DNS team

1. Please be careful when copying and pasting entries. The “gears._domainkey…” entries should be a single line, with only a single space in the entry, like “k=rsa; p=…”. Some email clients may interpret this entry as multiple lines or add additional spaces or escape characters.
2. Most DNS Service Provider portals will want the TXT text values without the " " quote marks.
3. The three DKIM records have TXT strings that are 225 characters, 225 characters, and 4 characters long and will not exceed the 255 character limit for DNS TXT records - please create them without concatenation.

You will also have a "Verify" button at the button of the window that will check these fields and ensure that a DNS record exists and that it has content. You will need to use this "Verify" button to manually verify your DNS records after you have set them up with your DNS host.

Once your records are able to be verified, they will need to go through our Change Management process and may take up to a week for the domains to be properly setup and activated.

Note: We have weekly changeover windows which means the status change from Waiting for Approval to Approved can take up to 7 days. Once Waiting For Approval status is reached, publishing of the DKIM signature for that domain is anticipated to be 1-7 days. The DKIM changes for your sending domain(s) require restarts of MTA server infrastructure and so we use strict Change Management processes, and they cannot be made precipitously.

Verifying Email Sending Domains

It is also possible to verify the email domains used in the From Email Address on your Email Send records and in the Send Email actions of your Campaign Automations if you have updated to at least version 10.11. For you email send records, there should be a "Verify" button next to the "From Email" field:

In your Campaign Automations, the"Verify" button will be located next to the "From Email Address" field:

Clicking on the "Verify" button in either location will check the domain of the email address to ensure that a corresponding domain has been setup within your Email Sending Domains and that the domain has been verified properly. Currently if the verification fails, this will not prevent your emails from still sending.