Sending Emails Using Your Own Domain
The BrightArrow interface allows you to send emails as if they were coming from your own email domain. This is a great way to make sure your intended recipients see the message as something from you rather than something that looks like spam. While the email looks like it comes from you it is actually sent from the BrightArrow servers. This is a common technique used by phishing sites trying to trick people into clicking on a fake list to gather their personal information and as such many email clients will now see these emails as junk mail.
When you send through BrightArrow you are not phishing, you’re sending valuable information to specific people. In order to increase the likelihood of your message not being automatically added to someone’s spam folder we suggest updating your email service to know that you are allowing valid emails to come through our servers on your behalf by editing your SPF record and setting up DKIM.
What needs to be done on my servers?
On your servers or the service that provides your email domain you'll need to change your SPF record to add BrightArrow. You'll also want to add our records for DKIM as well. Where to do this varies depending on how your email is set up but very general directions can be found in our document How to Set Up Emailing Using Your Domain
What if I have more than one domain?
Some groups have multiple email domains such as myorganizationsfullname.com and myorgabbr.com. In order to allow all of your domains to be able to send as themselves we'll need to have the SPF/DKIM set up for each domain. If all of your users should be sending as only one and not the others, such as when a domain has been changed but both technically still work in the world today, you can choose to just do the one and make sure everyone knows to only use that domain for sending.
Are there other things I should consider doing for more reliability?
Some organizations whitelist our servers. This helps when we send messages from our servers to someone with your domain by making sure your servers know we are allowed to send to you. Messages to others in your organization get through without being marked as spam. This won't help users outside of your domain. If you'd like to whitelist our servers you can find a list of those servers in the document titled Email Server Whitelisting: IP Addresses List
Sending from your domain vs replying to your domain
BrightArrow gives you the option of sending from your domain, using our servers, or allowing our servers to send as BrightArrow but setting the 'reply to' portion of the email to your domain. There are pros and cons to each. Below are some things to keep in mind when making that decision.
Default Setting - send and reply using default BrightArrow address
By default, the servers will send as Notification-Do_Not_Reply@brightarrow.com. Do nothing to set this up.
| Pros | Cons |
| Email is sent from a BrightArrow server AS a BrightArrow email address. This reduces the chance your email appears as spam to recipient’s filters. | The email address won’t mean much to your recipients as they know you but probably don’t know BrightArrow. |
| Feedback (failed attempts, bad email addresses, etc.) comes back to our server and is included in the reports. | Replies go back to our server so you will never see them. |
Sending as your own domain
By adding our information to your SPF record, your emails will send from our server as if we are your server. Once the SPF record is updated and someone from BrightArrow has made the necessary changes, you can change your default email addresses in the user settings as seen below.
| Pros | Cons |
| Email address is from your organization which is likely recognizable by your recipients. | Feedback (failed attempts, bad email addresses, etc.) is sent to the sending address. This can be very alarming when a mass message suddenly creates many responses back to the sender. |
| With SPF in place our server is “allowed” to send on your behalf so that emails are rejected as spam less often. | Finding real replies amongst all the feedback could be time consuming. |
Using your domain as the 'reply to'
The third option is a hybrid of these. You do not need to update your SPF record as the server will continue to use the Notification-Do_Not_Reply@brightarrow.com email address as the sender. However, the email address from your domain will be used as the 'reply to' address. In this way bounces come back to us and can be included in the report, but real replies get sent back to you.
| Pros | Cons |
| Emails coming from the BrightArrow server as a BrightArrow email address are less likely to be seen as spam by filters. | The sender email address won’t mean much to your recipients as they know you but probably don’t know BrightArrow. |
| Feedback (failed attempts, bad email addresses, etc) comes back to our server and is included in the reports. | |
| Replies go back to the email address entered. This means you’ll only get real email replies, not all of the server feedback. | |
| Your SPF record does not need to be updated. This method can be used right away, no extra setup. |