Sending Domains

After you get Campaigns+ installed, few important things that you need to configure before sending your first broadcast, include configuring a Sending Domain. It is one of the mandatory steps that needs to be carried out before you can actually able to send an email broadcast. 

Primary Domain

This specific article covers the scope of sending and tracking domain within Campaigns+. But before you can setup a sending domain, you would need to go through from the process of setting up a primary domain. Scope of primary domain is discussed in a separate article that you can reach by clicking Primary Domain. 

Sending & Tracking Domain

Following area discusses both the sending and tracking domain in detail. 

Navigate to Add a Domain

Main Navigation -> Setup -> Sending Domains

Sending Domain 

The messages you send will appear to be sent from the domain you have selected as Sending Domain during this process. On the recipient's end, the Sending Domain will appear in the From Email of the sender, i.e. from@yourdomain.com , in this yourdomain.com is a domain that you have configured as a sending domain. As mentioned, it is one of the mandatory step without completing which you will not be able to carry out several things, e.g. even Adding a List also. When you create a list, you are asked to attach information of the sender (Sender Information) with every list you create. Among the sender information, one required field is Owner Email, and this can't complete this entry without having a Sending Domain configured. So here goes the process of setting up a sender domain. 

The sending domain setup only appears when you are done with the primary domain. If you still haven't setup a preferred option for primary installation domain, you will see that the system will prompt you to first setup a primary domain before you can move on to configure a domain for sending purposes. 

Adding a Sending Domain 

The page where it lands after clicking Sending Domain under the Setup from the left navigation menu,  you will see all currently available sending domains listed. When you do it for the first time and doesn't have a domain readily available in your account to appear in the table, you will need to first click "Add New" from the left side on the page to start adding a new domain.

Clicking add new will take you to the page where you will see the field to provide the address of domain you want to use for sending emails. Make sure you have provided a complete correct and qualified address of the sending domain. 

Save & Generate Keys: Clicking this button will save the domain and will further process the domain name to automatically generate the corresponding records for DKIM entry. If you want Mumara to sing your message the setup will help you generate the public key of the DKIM key pair. Default selector for the DKIM entry generates through Mumara is "Key" you however have the ability to change this to your desired selector. 

Keys and Records 

Your sending domain was added to the system and you can view it listed in the Sending Domain table. However, unless you properly configure the keys or setup the records, your emails will potentially be ended up being ignored or trapped by the filter. So if your MTA/SMTP isn't signing the messages for DKIM, you can go ahead to generate it through Mumara.

DKIM 

Once you proceed after providing the sending domain, system automatically generates the public and private key pair for the DKIM entry of your sending domain. DKIM is among the must follow practices before you can start sending all types of communication through email. If you have configured a PowerMTA server using our PowerMTA module, the private key of the pair would have automatically been configured in your sending server, and you will only need the public key of the pair to be implemented in the DNS of your domain. The key visible on your screen is known as public key. If you haven't configured your PMTA mail server through PowerMTA module of Campaigns+ or you are using some other email relays/mail servers, you can download the private key clicking the button that appears beside the public key. See in the image below. For the private key you will configure it within your mail server and public key will be implemented as TXT record in the sending domain's DNS zone. 

Note: We highly recommend implementing other email authentications like SPF (Sender Policy Framework) according the resources you have deployed, in order to avoid the deliverability to suffer. 

Tracking Domain 

A tracking domain is the sub-domain of your sending domain, and it is mainly used to conceal the identity of your primary (Installation) domain URL by redirecting it to the tracking domain URL through one of the provided methods of .htaccess mask forward or CNAME mapping. Once configured, the tracking domain URL will eventually be used for tracking hyperlinks & pixels when the option is set to track the opens/clicks. This will prevent the recipients to see the actual domain (Primary/Installation) domain where they were actually directed from. So right implementation of the sending & tracking domain will make your emails appear to be sent from the sending domain and the tracking URL will appear in the tracking route. Not implementing it correctly will reveal the primary domain URL in the tracking route. 

CNAME 

CNAME is the type of record in DNS that helps to map a name to another name. In current case, the CNAME record of the tracking domain (Which is sub-domain of sending domain) should point to the installation domain. You can see when you select CNAME as type, you are guided with the values you should insert while creating the CNAME type of record in the  DNS of your tracking domain. It is providing you all three values for the right DNS entry, Host, Type and Value. See towards the bottom of image above. 

As mentioned, CNAME is the type of record that needs to be configured using the DNS settings. You can create CNAME using administrative tools provided by the sending domain registrant, or your host depending on your accessibility and convenience. Reach DNS settings that may be called Advanced Settings, Name Server Manager or DNS Management to update the CNAME entry.

In the CNAME process, the tracking link (Sub-domain of sending domain) alias to the primary domain URL. 

.htaccess 

The .htacess is a configuration file that uses Apache based web server environment to effect over the directory it is placed in. The option would give you an ability to configure a tracking domain (which is a sub-domain of sending domain) for the recipient to see (for hyperlinks/pixels) instead of primary/installation domain. The process ensures that the primary domain URL was concealed while the tracking URL of the sending domain is only exposed to the recipient, when the recipient hovers  the hyperlinks or during the process they are redirected to the landing page after clicking. 

The process is quite straightforward and is considered more reliable when you don't want to expose the primary domain IP in the traceroute. You can see when you click .htaccess as your preferred option, system indicates "click here to download .htaccess file". Click to download, and place this .htaccess file in the root folder of your domain after extracting it. See the following image to download .htaccess configuration file. 

Viewing Sending Domain 

After you have completed the process of configuring a sending domain along with its tracking URL, you will be able to see it listed in the Sending Domains table. This table offers not only a valuable information with regard to the domains you have setup for sending purposes, but also gives you the ability to execute processes for verification/validation. Let's take a note of this information and see how Campaigns+ recognizes a sending domain all good/valid for sending emails. Following area discusses the columns of View Sending Domains table. 

Sending Domain 

URLs of the domains you put forward as Sending Domains, will appear under the rows of this column. Each row under this column represents a unique entry of sending domain along with other related information next to it. 

Tracking Domain 

Tracking domain as discussed above in this document is the sub-domain of the main sending domain that you have put forward. A prefix that you preferred along with the sending domain will constitute structure of tracking domain URL that will appear in the tracking route. Under this column, you will see the prefix value that was being added in the sending domain to constitute a tracking URL. 

Redirection Type 

An option between .htaccess or CNAME that was being selected for masking forward or URL mapping. The process has been discussed above in this article.

DKIM 

System automatically tries to verify if the pair of DKIM is rightly authenticating against the provided domain. If a cross appears, it means that certain domain doesn't authenticate for the key pair. The check mark denotes that system has recognized the implementation of key pair as success. 

Redirection 

A cross or a check mark will appear to indicate if the masking or mapping of the tracking URL is working correctly or not. 

Created On 

A date stamp to show that date and time when the process of certain sending domain took place. 

Actions 

Contrary to the typical edit or delete options that action menu offers for majority view tables of the account, this would help you perform/execute important processes. Following area outlines the working of each action. 

View Domain 

Clicking on it will take you to the page where you had implemented the DKIM and grabbed the information for the Tracking URL. You can view the record again, or can update the type of masking/redirection, or can also update the prefix value of the tracking URL. 

Set as Confirmed 

If the process of auto verification of successful redirection of the tracking URL or DKIM pair verification isn't working for you, and you are sure that it is working fine and you have configured it rightly on your side. Then you can push the system to force confirm these values by clicking this option. 

Verify DKIM 

Click to manually run the process of verifying the pair of  DKIM record that you have implemented. 

Verify Tracking 

Click to manually run the process of verifying if the masking/mapping of the tracking URL is working fine.

Verify DKIM and Tracking 

This would run both the verification processes, verifying the correctness of the DKIM key pair as well as the verification of the masking/mapping of the tracking URL. 

Download Key Pair 

Go ahead to click this button and download the DKIM private and public key pair. 

Delete

If you no longer wants to use specific domain, you can choose to delete it from the system. 

Bulk Delete

If you are looking to delete more than one entries at a time, you can check these desired domains by ticking the checkboxes under the column that appears before sending domain. There is another action menu which is placed at the right side corner of the table, delete under this action menu will help you delete all the records you have selected.