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What is DMARC and how do I pass DMARC checks?
What is DMARC and how do I pass DMARC checks?

Understanding DMARC policies and how to prevent ending up in your recipient's junk or spam inbox for Pirate Ship's tracking emails

Updated over a week ago

DMARC is an acronym that stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance. In layman's terms, it's an email standard that keeps spammers from using your website's domain to send emails without your permission. If the tracking emails you're sending from your domain don't pass DMARC checks, there's a high chance they'll end up in your recipients' spam or junk inboxes ๐Ÿ™ˆ

If you want to customize your tracking emails and send them from your website's domain instead of Pirate Ship's, passing DMARC checks is crucial to get your tracking numbers to your recipients.

How to pass DMARC checks

In order to pass DMARC checks, you'll need to verify DKIM and SPF, which allows Pirate Ship to prove that we're sending emails on your behalf. Basically, these verifications show email providers that we're not using your domain to send spam emails ๐Ÿ˜…

Verifying both DKIM and SPF authentication allows you to pass DMARC checks, and you'll be able to send tracking emails on Pirate Ship that come from your own domain!

Verifying DKIM

To add a DKIM record, you'll need access to your domain name's DNS settings. These settings are usually available in the dashboard of wherever you bought your domain name. The exact instructions are available in Pirate Ship when you click the Verify DKIM button...and Pirate Ship provides the exact DKIM record you need to add when you go into our tracking email template.

Verifying SPF

Unfortunately, Pirate Ship doesn't offer a button to verify SPF like we do DKIM. So, you need to manually add an SPF record in order to pass DMARC. To do this, you'll need to add the following Postmark SPF record to your domain's DNS settings:

v=spf1 a mx include:spf.mtasv.net ~all.

Once you add that line of code, you'll be all set ๐Ÿ‘

Read more about DKIM and SPF records.

As an alternative, consider Pirate Ship's default tracking emails

If reading this article makes you feel like you've just gulped down nine bottles of grog, don't worry. Pirate Ship automatically sends tracking emails to your recipients as long as you enter their email addresses when purchasing a label, and using this feature requires little to no effort on your behalf!

By default, Pirate Ship sends tracking emails from ship@pirateship.com with your email address as the reply-to. Since they come from Pirate Ship's domain, these emails are configured to automatically pass DMARC checks and end up in your recipient's inbox without a hitch ๐Ÿ˜‰

Any questions? Chat with us by clicking the blue button and we'll help you get sailing in the right direction โ›ต

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