SPF records

Managing SPF settings for your mailings

SPFs (Sender Policy Framework) are digital signatures for clearly identifying the sender of a mailing. If you believe your SPF needs assessing, we recommend that you ask your IT expert to help you with this.

Important

Your SPF rules need to be set up by an IT expert who knows about all the legitimate sources of your mail, who fully understands the syntax of SPF and DNS, and has access to the DNS for your domain.

Your IT expert will need to create a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) file inside your DNS settings (DNS is routing information for your domain name - e.g. yourwebsite.com).

Why SPFs are used

SPFs are one response to the problem of phishing scams, which can impersonate people or organisations. It is frequently one of several tests that large mail providers might make on inbound mail.

Mass mailings are more likely to be seen as spam for a variety of reasons. Depending on the recipient's mail system, their personal mail or security settings or the 'reputation for spam' that your domain may already have, it is not possible to guarantee that your mailings will not be labelled as spam. Review our tips for preventing mailings from being recognised as spam and how to boost your sender reputation for more information on this topic.

Further resources:

http://www.openspf.org
http://www.kitterman.com/spf/validate.html

Key points to note

Checking and updating your SPF settings

To view the current SPF record for your domain you can use the DIG tool at Google. Just put your domain name (e.g. example.com) in the 'Name' field and select 'TXT' in the list of options below this. The section in between quotes starting "v=spf1….." is the SPF record.

If you do not have an SPF record set up then we highly recommend that you ask your IT person/ company to create an SPF file inside your DNS settings (DNS is routing information for your domain name - e.g. example.com) following the advice below.

If you already have SPF rules set up, then you should ensure that Artlogic's mailing systems are authorised under this policy to send mail from your domain (see below).

Our advice

We cannot tell you exactly what to put in your SPF record as we will not know about your specific mail set up, however, we can offer this general advice:

1. SPF rules need to be set up by someone who knows about all the legitimate sources of your mail.
2. It needs to be set up by someone who fully understands the syntax of SPF and DNS and has access to the DNS for your domain.
3. It needs to include the following in the right place:

include:_spf.artlogic.net

Test if your domain has an SPF rule

1. Go to https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/#TXT/ .
2. Type in your domain (e.g. yourwebsite.com).
3. Select Return.
4. Look for a line starting "v=spf1", and ending "~all", and containing exactly this information "include:_spf.artlogic.net" 

If you are using Google Workspace (like we at Artlogic do), your SPF rule will look similar to this:

v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:_spf.artlogic.net ~all

Further information

Bounce management

We also recommend that you process your rejected mail in Artlogic. This will show you which email addresses have been rejected in Artlogic and give you the opportunity to correct failing addresses.

For more information about this, see our guide: Bounce management

Preventing your emails from registering as spam

Mass mailings are more likely to be seen as spam for a variety of reasons that cannot be controlled by Artlogic. Depending on the recipient's mail system, their personal mail or security settings or the 'reputation for spam' that your domain may already have, it is not possible to guarantee that your mailings will not be labelled as spam.

For more information about this, see our guide: Tips to prevent mailings from being recognised as spam