By default, your Communic8 platform comes pre-built with the email sender “From” address set to “clientname@communic8.com”. Say your company is called “Acme Consulting”, and your client platform name was set to “acmeconsulting” at the time of commissioning your platform instance. The “From” address that your recipients will see in their email inbox will be “acmeconsulting@communic8.com”.
To improve your email delivery and open rates, we recommend that you send your email using a company email address. Continuing with the example above (“Acme Consulting”), say your company website is “www.acmeconsulting.com”. You should ideally send your email on the Communic8 platform using an email “From” address such as “hr.team@acmeconsulting.com” or “marketing@acmeconsulting.com”. We can assist you in this process.
If you have security concerns with Communic8 sending email with your domain in the "From" field, a possible solution would be for us to set up a separate subdomain off of your current domain (e.g. "c8.acmeconsulting.com") and use that for your custom sending address (e.g. "marketing@c8.acmeconsulting.com").
While this is a very straightforward process that can be achieved quickly, you will need to meet the following requirements to move forward:
You own or have control over your company domain name. In the example above the domain name is “acmeconsulting.com”
You have IT support staff or external IT support services to make the necessary changes to your IT infrastructure
Step 1: Involve IT as Early as Possible
If you complete steps 2-4 (outlined below) in a timely manner, the process usually takes a couple of days to complete. But step 1 can take time depending on your organisation, and in particular, your organisation's security mindset. We recommend that you contact your IT support team early to give them time to properly assess our solution and ask questions. We recommend having a meeting between a Communic8 technical staff member and your IT support team (please speak to your account manager for help setting up the meeting). We cannot stress this enough as it will allow for a smooth process moving forward.
To help you establish who you should involve from your organisation's IT support team, we recommend a team member(s) who is responsible for:
Network and email administration and configuration
DNS settings
Once you’ve established who can assist you with your IT configuration needs, please contact your Communic8 account manager to organise a kick-off meeting.
Meanwhile, we recommend you continue to step 2 below.
Step 2: Email Support
Email Support support@communic8.com and provide the following information:
In the Subject field of the email, include the following text: “Request for configurable email address"
In the body of the email include the following information:
The email address you would like to use as your default configurable email address (e.g., "marketing@acmeconsulting.com" or "marketing@c8.acmeconsulting.com"). Please note: only one email address can be used
Provide the name and email address of your technical contact who has the proper authority to manage your DNS settings
Once we’ve received the email with the proper information provided, we will start the Authenticate Domain process and send instructions to the technical contact you provided in the ticket. Our instructions will include CNames generated by SendGrid (our email sending and reputation service) that your technical contact will utilize in step 3 below.
Step 3: Add CNames to DNS
Your technical contact is to follow the email instructions to configure your DNS by adding 3 CNames generated by SendGrid and click “I'm Done” once complete (see image below):
Step 4: Notify Communic8 of Change
You must notify us once you have completed step 3
We will verify the changes to your domain and configure your Communic8 instance (which will be one working day)
We will notify you via email once we’ve completed the process
Start using the platform!
Suggestion: Great job! Now you can send email using your own company email address. We also recommend the following if your organization has strict security measures around email delivery: It is common for an organization to have internal IT security measures to protect themselves from unwanted “spam” emails and potentially malicious websites. In order for Communic8’s communications to pass seamlessly through these security measures, we recommend that your IT team add our IP address and domains to your safe lists (“Whitelist”) for both your firewall and email filters. We suggest that you follow the instructions to whitelist the domains.
One more thing... if you're like us and want to be extra sure that all the beautiful campaigns that you've worked so hard on land in your recipient's inbox, read the "Recommendations on maintaining high delivery" support article. This article provides a 5-step plan which will most certainly improve your campaign email delivery.