Technical DNS Setup to Land Cold Emails from Gmail in Inbox as against Spam

You've probably heard of google algorithms to rank a site or a page depending on keywords, context and a bunch of other factors. Google also has algorithms to categorize an email for their users to decide which go to main INBOX and which go to SPAM among other things.

As a sales development professional (or an AE who partially does sales development), you want your emails to hit people's inbox. That's when they get opened, read, replied, so some of them become a sale for your AE.

I'm going to share the tech set up required in plain language, so you can simply copy, paste and edit as required and use them to get more of your emails to people's inboxes as against their spam folders. You'll still be sending some to the spam but most will make it to the inbox. 

Where are these changes made?

2) One of these DNS settings needs an input from and then a click of a button at a gmail page (link below, like I said this will be super-easy).

3) So we basically add three DNS records. Each DNS is made of 4 parts a) Name b) Record Type (select TXT from dropdown for all three records we are creating here) c) TTL (leave it as is) d) Value

Name and Value for each are provided below. Record type is always TXT for each one.

What do you need to make these changes?

1) Have admin access to your domain registrar. That's when you'll be able to add the DNS settings for your sending domain like we want to, and

2) Have admin access to your gmail account. This is so you can get input from gmail for one of the DNS settings (DKIM, you'll see below).

It's totally fine if you don't have access to these yourself, just figure out who does and send them these instructions. 

In the entries below, I've used my email address with at instead of @. Where applicable, replace insidesalesondemand.com with your domain and my email address with yours, use your correct email address with @ instead of at here. Another common mistake that people do is to ignore the _ before dmarc.. Don't! Please use it as is :) 

Try the option AFTER OR first and if that doesn't work, then use the one before OR. 

On google domains and godaddy, for example the ones after the OR works.

Add a TXT record (select TXT as the record type from the drop down) for each of these three settings. 

1. DMARC Setup

Name: _dmarc.insidesalesondemand.com OR _dmarc

Value: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:raj.nasaratinsidesalesondemand.com

2. SPF

Name: insidesalesondemand.com OR @

Value: v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all 

3. DKIM

Name: google._domainkey.insidesalesondemand.com OR google._domainkey

Value: Follow steps here: https://support.google.com/a/answer/174124?hl=en

This is the link where you can generate DKIM: https://admin.google.com/u/2/ac/apps/gmail/authenticateemail?hl=en

(be logged in as an admin for the domain you are setting up)

It takes 24 hours to generate DKIM for a fresh gmail. So if you've purchased a new domain and are setting up gmail from scratch, you'd need to wait for at least 24 hours before you can generate the value needed to setup DKIM.

Once the DNS for DKIM is setup come back to the gmail page (https://admin.google.com/u/2/ac/apps/gmail/authenticateemail?hl=en) as an admin and click on 'START AUTHENTICATION'

Here’s an example of SPF, DKIM and DMARC done right: (look at the last 3 entries)

Once you've set these for your domain, please check here: 

https://www.mail-tester.com/spf-dkim-check  (this link is for checking SPF and DKIM) (domain is domain in insidesalesondemand.com format, and DKIM selector is 'google' w/o inverted commas) 

https://www.dmarcanalyzer.com/dmarc/dmarc-record-check/  (this link is for checking if DMARC is setup properly)

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Domain blacklist check: https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx

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Test emails you send: https://www.mail-tester.com/

These steps above cover how to send cold emails to recipients' inbox as against spam folder from a technical perspective, sort of a like a digital handshake with the receiving servers. Here's a blog that covers everything else needed to send to inboxes, get emails opened and replied: https://blog.salesdevelopment.solutions/2021/01/cold-email-checklist.html

Hope these help you be more valuable to your closers and your organizations. 

About me: I'm Raj Nadar, Founder of Sales Development Solutions.

2) Sold to over 20 countries so far but predominantly in the US, Western Europe, India and Canada.

3) Sold from $50 a month SaaS to $ 250K a year deal.

4) Products sold so far include: Cyber Security, RPA, Messenger, Messaging bots' platform, Customer Success SaaS, LMS, Workflow SaaS, business messenger platform, subscription software, Conversational AI, testing SaaS, as well as traditional tools such as ERP, CRM, PLM, OTS, DMS etc.