Your email domain is part of your brand. If someone sends fraudulent emails using your domain name, it damages your reputation — with email providers and with the families you're trying to reach. DMARC is now a baseline requirement for anyone sending email from their own domain. This article explains what it is, how it works, and what we do to keep your domain protected.
Table of Contents
- Improve Email Delivery & Protect Your Reputation with DMARC Monitoring
- Google and Yahoo Now Require DMARC
- The Four DNS Records That Secure Your Domain
- How DMARC Enforcement Works
- What We Monitor and Why
- A Note on Third-Party Email Services
- Email Security is an Add-On We Offer
Improve Email Delivery & Protect Your Reputation with DMARC Monitoring
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) lets you control who can send email from your domain. Legitimate emails get through. Fraudulent ones — emails that appear to come from your domain but were sent by someone else — get blocked.
Implementing DMARC and other anti-phishing protocols reduces the chance of human error, protects your brand, and stops hackers from sending emails from your domain. By tracking and improving your email authentication standards, you improve your deliverability and protect your reputation.
Google and Yahoo Now Require DMARC
In 2024, Google and Yahoo introduced new requirements for email senders. A DMARC record is now required to send email to Gmail and Yahoo addresses.
You don't have to enforce it right away. Setting your DMARC policy to p=none satisfies the requirement — it means you're monitoring, not blocking. But the record must exist. Without it, your emails are more likely to land in spam or get rejected entirely.
This is no longer optional. It's a baseline requirement for anyone who sends email from their own domain.
The Four DNS Records That Secure Your Domain
Email security is implemented by adding and monitoring four DNS records on your domain.
- SPF — Specifies which servers are allowed to send email as your domain.
- DKIM — A validation key, similar to a password, that verifies your emails haven't been tampered with.
- BIMI — Brand Indicator Message Identification. An industry-wide effort to display your logo inside the inbox when an email is verified as legitimate. It helps recipients recognize and trust your emails at a glance.
- DMARC — Sets the rules and generates reports. You can monitor, quarantine, or reject emails that fail SPF and DKIM authentication.
How DMARC Enforcement Works
DMARC enforcement is a gradual process. Moving too fast can interfere with legitimate email delivery, so the rollout is intentionally slow.
Here's how it works:
- Start with
p=none(monitor only). This lets you identify all the sources authorized to send as your domain before applying any rules. - Once you're confident all authorized sources are accounted for, move to
p=quarantineat 10% and gradually increase to 100%. - Finally, move to
p=reject— starting at 10% and working up to 100%.
This process typically takes several months from start to finish.
What We Monitor and Why
Once your DNS records are in place, ongoing monitoring is essential. We use EasyDMARC to monitor two types of reports:
- Aggregate Reports (RUA) — A summary of all email activity on your domain. Shows which sources are sending as your domain and whether they're passing authentication.
- Failure Reports (RUF) — Detailed reports on individual emails that failed authentication. Helps identify unauthorized senders quickly.
Monitoring these reports is what allows you to move through the enforcement stages with confidence.
A Note on Third-Party Email Services
If you add a third-party service to send email from your domain — a newsletter platform, a CRM, a booking tool — your DNS records will need to be updated. That new service needs to be authorized as a sender, or its emails will fail authentication.
This is easy to miss. Any time you add a new email tool, make sure your SPF and DKIM records are updated to include it.
Email Security is an Add-On We Offer
Setting up and managing DMARC monitoring is something we handle for our clients as an add-on service. We configure your DNS records, set up EasyDMARC monitoring, and manage the enforcement rollout over time — so you don't have to think about it.
If you're a current client and want to add email security to your plan, contact us and we'll get it set up.
