DMARC Policy Explained

Created by Zuppler Level 2 Support, Modified on Thu, 19 Sep at 12:58 PM by Zuppler Level 2 Support

Q: What is DMARC Policy?

A: Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is a protocol that helps protect email domains from unauthorized access and usage. This policy determines what happens to an email after it is checked against SPF and DKIM records. An email either passes or fails SPF and DKIM. The DMARC policy determines if failure results in the email being marked as spam, getting blocked, or being delivered to its intended recipient.

As an example, let's say a guest is trying to sign up and they complete the process but they do not get an email, what this means is that the channel from where the guest is placing the order has the contact email configured to be an email ID using their own domain email and that domain is not authenticated in sendgrid . For example let's say the domain is www.abcd123.com then the email is xyz@abcd123.com

Note: This behavior impacts ALL email notifications configured for the account.

How do we resolve this since we send the email on behalf of the client via sendgrid:

Steps
- Generate dns records on via sendgrid sender authentication
  - Type of records generated;
    - CNAME - a total of 3 records are generated
    - TXT - a total of 1 records are generated
- Update the dns records on clients domain
- Verify Update on Sendgrid

Once the steps are completed we are good to go. Note these updates are done on an on-demand basis and are for clients where we don't have domain access to.