Email Sending Domains

Email Sending Domains Required Starting January 25, 2027

Important Note: Starting January 25, 2027, emails can only be sent from approved Email Sending Domains. If the domain used in the From Email Address of your emails does not have an Approved status by this date, you will not be able to send emails from that domain. Because your DNS records must be set up and verified, and then go through our weekly Change Management process, the approval process is not immediate. We highly recommend that you begin setting up your Email Sending Domains as soon as possible.

Why this change is being made

Major mailbox providers, including Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft, have introduced stricter authentication requirements for the emails that they receive. Sending from an approved Email Sending Domain sets DKIM signing and your Return Path domain to align with your From: domain, which helps your emails meet these requirements and reach your recipients' inboxes. Requiring approved sending domains also ensures that emails sent via Click can only be sent from domains that have been set up and verified by their owners, which helps protect your domain from being used by others. For more details regarding the Gmail and Yahoo requirements, please see our article here.

Who is affected

This change affects all customers who send emails via Click. You will need to take action before January 25, 2027 if:

• You have not set up any Email Sending Domains, or
   
• You send emails from a domain that has not been added to your Email Sending Domains, or that does not have an Approved status. For example, if you send emails for more than one brand or region, each domain used in a From Email Address will need to be approved.

If every domain that you send from already has an Approved status, you do not need to add any new domains. However, we recommend that you verify the From Email Address on your Email Send records and Campaign Automations as described below.

What happens if your domain is not approved by January 25, 2027

Starting January 25, 2027, if the domain used in the From Email Address of an email does not have an Approved status, the email will not be sent. You will not be able to send emails from that domain until your DNS records have been verified and the domain has completed our Change Management process.

What you need to do

1. Identify your sending domains: Review the From Email Address on your Email Send records and in the Send Email actions of your Campaign Automations, and make a list of each domain that you send from.
    
2. Check the status of your existing domains: Navigate to the ClickDimensions Settings page and select the "Email Sending Domains" option. Confirm that each domain on your list has been added and has an Approved status.
    
3. Add any missing domains: Create a new Email Sending Domain for each domain that has not been added, as described in Adding Email Sending Domains below. We highly recommend that you place the email address of a monitored mailbox in the Contact Email field.
    
4. Set up your DNS records: After saving, share the DNS records shown for the domain with your IT department. You can use the Export to Text File option to export these records. Please make sure that your DNS team reviews the Important notes for your DNS team below.
    
5. Verify your DNS records: After your DNS records have been set up with your DNS host, use the "Verify" button at the bottom of the window to verify them. Once your records are verified, the status will change from Waiting for DNS Verification to Waiting for Approval.
    
6. Wait for approval: Once the Waiting for Approval status is reached, the domain will go through our Change Management process. Because we have weekly changeover windows, the status change from Waiting for Approval to Approved can take up to 7 days. If there are any issues when authenticating the domain, we will contact the Contact Email address for that domain.
    
7. Confirm the From Email Address on your emails: Use the "Verify" button on your Email Send records and Campaign Automations to confirm that each From Email Address uses an approved domain, as described in Verifying Email Sending Domains below. Update any From Email Address that does not use an approved domain.

If you need assistance setting up your Email Sending Domains, please open a Support ticket with us.

Setting Up Email Sending Domains

Important Note: 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.

We use changeover windows, which means that the status change from Waiting for Approval to Approved can take up to 7 days after your IT department has verified with your DNS provider. Once your IT department has completed the Waiting for DNS Verification stage and the Waiting for Approval status is reached, publishing of the DKIM signature for that domain is anticipated to be an additional 1-7 days. 

In version 10.11, we added the ability for customers to add and set up 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 the 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 subdomain was "email.yourcompany.com", then you would only enter "email" into this field. Your chosen subdomain needs to be unique to Click 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. For example, if you place link in the Email CNAME field, then your email links will show as link.mydomain.com within emails sent via Click.
    
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 set up 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 .txt 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 bottom 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 set up 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 your 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 set up 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. However, starting January 25, 2027, emails can only be sent from approved sending domains, and emails with a From Email Address that does not use an approved domain will not be sent. We recommend that you use the "Verify" button to check the From Email Address on your Email Send records and Campaign Automations before this date, and confirm that each domain has an Approved status in your Email Sending Domains.