Verifying Sending Domain

Learn how to verify your email sending domain in Retainful.

Verifying your email sending domain is very important for sending and scheduling campaigns in Retainful.

Let’s see how to verify the email sending domain.

Prerequisites

• Make sure that you are using Retainful’s Starter or a higher plan

You can access the ‘Sending Domain’ feature in the 14-day free trial as well.

Checklist

1. Generating DNS records

2. Adding the DNS records to the Domain host

3. Verifying the DNS records

Generating DNS records

Step 1: Login to your Retainful dashboard

Step 2: Go to Settings -> Email -> Sending Domain

Step 3: Enter your ‘Sub Domain Name’ and click on ‘Add Domain’.

NOTE: We allow adding "subdomains" as sending domains. Since many store owners configure a number of SPF records for the main domain, it causes confusion and misconfiguration. So, we changed the "Sending domain" to use the subdomain... You can enter something like "send" as the subdomain and add the DNS records.

Sending Domain

Step 4: Once you click on Add Domain, a success message appears with the DNS records like this,

DNS Records

Step 5: You can find three DNS records in the list, the first two are ‘TXT’ type, and the last one is ‘CNAME’ type. These records need to be added to your hosting account's DNS records page.

Adding the DNS records

You can follow the below instructions to add/edit the DNS records to the domain host.

NOTE: Below are general instructions for adding/editing DNS records that will work for most domain hosts. We will be coming up with more detailed documentation on how to add those records to specific hosts.

I. Login to your hosting provider account; For instance,

1. GoDaddy

2. Hostgator

3. AWS

4. Google Domains

5. Bluehost

6. Hostinger

II. Go to your domain's DNS records page, often called ‘DNS Management’, ‘Name Server Management’

III. Select the option to add a new record.

IV. Adding the ‘TXT’ type records,

1. Select record type ‘TXT’

2. In the Host/Alias/Name field, paste the Host/Name entry copied from the Retainful settings page. The name entry to be copied is indicated in the below screenshot:

SPF Record

3. In the Value/Answer/Destination field, paste the Value/Alias To copied from the Retainful settings page. The value to be copied is indicated in red in the below screenshot:

SPF Record Value

4. Save the record.

5. You can add the second TXT record, by repeating the same process (Step 1 to Step 4)

V. Adding the CNAME record,

1. Select the option to add a new record

2. Select record type ‘CNAME’

3. In the Host/Alias/Name field, paste the Host/Name entry copied from the Retainful settings page. The name entry to be copied is indicated in the below screenshot:

CNAME

4. In the Value/Answer/Destination field, paste the Value/Alias To copied from the Retainful settings page and save the record. The value to be copied is indicated in red in the below screenshot:

CNAME Value

5. Save the record

That’s it. You have added the DNS records to your domain host.

Verifying Domain

After adding the DNS records to your domain host, you need to verify if the records are added properly.

To verify the DNS records, visit your Retainful dashboard -> Settings -> Email -> Sending Domain and click on the ‘Verify Domain’ button.

Verifying Domain

Note: DNS can take up to 48 hours to update. You might want to wait sometime before clicking on the ‘Verify Domain’ button on the Retainful dashboard -> Settings -> Email -> Sending Domain.

Domain Verfied

Once the DNS records are verified, you can send and schedule campaigns.