This completes the "mask" that allows emails to come legitimately from the company’s domain, as opposed to appearing as if the email was spoofed.
This is accomplished via adding 3 CNAME Records to the DNS for the company’s domain.
What resources should be made available for this: DNS.
Domain authentication is a way Cerkl Broadcast platform employs to verify that an email is sent from the sender they claimed to be. It is an important process and often used in blocking harmful contents such as phishing scams. Most commonly used email authentication standards are SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Emails that fail the authentication will have a higher chance to be marked as spam or junk.
To ensure the deliverability, you need to set up the domain authentication.
Cerkl Broadcast uses Sendgrid for email sending and tracking. To allow for click tracking and reporting, Links in emails are converted to unique URLs.
By default, link URLs that are included in Blasts or News Digests will look similar to ’https://url123456.sendgrid.net/ls/click...’, When using the default Sendgrid URL format, HTTPS is supported.
While the Sendgrid URL used is unique and dedicated to only your Cerkl instances, organization leadership or security teams may have concerns about their audience mis-reporting the URLs or want more control. Custom Link Branding can be enabled easily, allowing you to utilize a domain of your choice instead of that Sendgrid URL.
Link Branded URLs utilize HTTP by default. These URLs will look similar to ’http://comms.yourdomain.com/ls/click ...’. To allow your domain to be used for Link Branding, a Host Domain and CNAME records will be provided to your team to add to your domain’s DNS (Please review them in the above section). This is all that’s required as an initial step for HTTP Link Branding.
After this step is completed, notify your Cerkl Team to verify.
HTTPS support for your domain is highly recommended, as most web browsers and modern security systems require an SSL Certificate for domains.
Sendgrid requires either a CDN or Proxy Server to host an SSL certificate for your domain. We are unable to host an SSL Certificate for your domain.
First, obtain an SSL Certificate for your domain, as you would for other domains.
Then, forward all the requests coming to your domain through your CDN or Proxy Server to sendgrid.net.
Please partner with your Implementation Project Manager or Customer Success Manager to discuss and schedule implementation and testing phases.
For more details on these and remaining tasks, please refer to the following Cerkl Help Desk article: Link Branding SSL Set Up.
CNAME records (canonical name records) alias your company's domains and subdomains, pointing them to our email provider in order to sign messages with validation, and they will be visible to your email recipients. This helps to make sure we can route all of your communications properly and securely.
In order to make this work, we will need you to set up 5 CNAME records on your company's domain name server (DNS). You will do this during the implementation portion of your launch with Cerkl facilitated by your Customer Success Account Manager. Once you have completed the CNAME record attachment, you will then need to reach out to your Account Manager or Platform Configuration Engineer so that they can verify everything is working properly.
Additionally, setting up a Reverse DNS will effectively associate your Dedicated IP with your organization. This is accomplished via adding an A Record to the DNS for your company's domain.
