Unless you want your emails to end up in your readers’ SPAM or JUNK folder, you need to do this.
While once optional, as of today, we are recommending that everyone purchase a custom domain with email. Here’s why…
Email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL are starting to implement strong DMARC policies (see below). What this means to you is that if you plan to bulk email your subscribers from an “unverified domain”, a domain that you do not own, your email is going straight to SPAM, or worse, it may get totally rejected and never even reach your readers!
Here’s How To Avoid The SPAM Folder
- Purchase A Custom Domain Name – And don’t forget to add email.
- Click Here To Submit A Domain Mapping Request – We’ll map your domain over to your blog at no cost to you. Just fill out this request form.
DMARC, SPAM, and Free Email Providers
Every email provider like Gmail, AOL, and Yahoo have “policies” that help determine whether incoming mail messages should be put in your inbox or marked as SPAM. DMARC is just one of these email validation policies. It stands for Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance. (That’s just a complicated way of saying “Is your email fraudulent or is it valid?”)
While it may seem annoying to you as a blogger at first glance, DMARC policies are actually a good thing for all of us because they help prevent spoofing, phishing, and fraudulent emails. The downside is that these overly strict DMARC policies can sometimes misidentify your perfectly legitimate emails as SPAM.
Email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL are starting to implement strong DMARC policies. If you use an email marketing tool like MailChimp (our recommended email service), Aweber, or Constant Contact, and you enter a “From Address” for your emails to be from a free email service (like Gmail, AOL, or Yahoo), their own DMARC policy may cause your emails to be marked as SPAM.
To make sure that your emails actually make it to your subscribers’ mailboxes, we strongly encourage you to get your own custom domain with email so the from address can be from a verified domain owned by you or your business, like myname@mydomain.com.
Not only will this help prevent your messages from being marked as SPAM, it will help your readers recognize your emails.
