There are three reasons that you should authenticate your Mailchimp domain:
- Your email campaign will show you as the sending domain and not Mailchimp and
- More of your emails will get through spam filters (and it will be more difficult for spammers to spoof your domain).
Authenticating your domain is a once-off activity. Firstly we need to check if our domain is authenticated within Mailchimp.
How to Check If Your Domain Is Authenticated in Mailchimp
Follow these steps to check if your domain is authenticated in Mailchimp.
- Login to Mailchimp.
- Click your name to the left of the screen.
- Click Account.
- Click Settings then Domains.
If you see the word Authenticated on a green background then your domain is authenticated. If you see Verified on a blue background then your domain needs to be authenticated.
How to Authenticate Your Domain
If you are familiar with adding amending and adding DNS records then please follow the instructions provided by Mailchimp. If you have no idea what a DNS record is then keep reading 😉
Create an email message to your webhost or whoever your purchased your domain from. In the message copy and paste the following (note: where you see example.com change this to be your domain):
I use Mailchimp to send email marketing. Please add the following records for my domain:
- Create a CNAME record for k2._domainkey.example.com with this value: dkim2.mcsv.net
- Create a CNAME record for k3._domainkey.example.com with this value: dkim3.mcsv.net
Please see Mailchimp’s recommendations should you have further questions.
Thank you
Once your provider has advised that they have made the change wait about 48 hours and check if your domain is now authenticated by:
- Login to Mailchimp.
- Click your name to the bottom left of the screen.
- Click Account.
- Click Settings then Domains.
- Click the word Authenticate (next to your domain name).
- Click Authenticate Domain.
- If you don’t see Authenticated then contact your provider and advise them that the domain isn’t authenticating.
Appreciate your two articles about the “spoofed” error message in Gmail and the one on how to authenticate a domain in Mailchimp!
Glad they helped
Hello Gary, Merry Christmas first of all! Thanks for the very informative article, it helped me a lot. I did all the steps and now have an authenticated domain, but I keep getting Gmail spoof mail warnings when I get a mail from Mailchimp alerting me that I have a new subscriber, so I’m concerned something is still wrong. It’s been more than 48 hours since I authenticated. Any clue? Thanks! –Mike
Merry Christmas to you too Mike 🙂
I see that the SPF record has been added to your domain however it looks like the DKIM (“Create a CNAME record for k1._domainkey.example.com with this value: dkim.mcsv.net”) is missing in your domain records. I recommend adding the DKIM record.
In addition, you may need to train Gmail that the Mailchimp notification emails aren’t spam/spoof. You should be able to mark the emails in Gmail as safe and Gmail will learn from your manual input.
Hi Gary, thanks for the interesting article. I already verified our domain and still our mailings get a warning in Gmail. Do you have any idea what causes this? Thanks!
Hi Nina,
What warning is seen in Gmail? Also, what domain are you using as your sending domain in Mailchimp?
Thanks
Hi. Can you give me any idea how to troubleshoot if it doesn’t work? I setup the CNAME exactly as it should be and I still get an errors saying it can’t find the record. Mailchimp spits out this: We tried to verify your DNS changes and did not detect the right values. Remember that DNS changes can take 24-48 hours to propagate through the internet.
DKIM: CNAME record for k1._domainkey.shivershield.com pointing to dkim.mcsv.net not found.
My CNAME says this: k1._domainkey dkim.mcsv.net (I would put it in a screenshot, but I don’t think it’s possible) using cloudflare DNS if that makes any difference.
Well, after a bit more research, I see that yes indeed cloudflare DNS >>is<< different. Found a great article on it. https://bobandedovic.com/blog/technology/how-to-authenticate-a-domain-name-on-mailchimp-using-cloudflare-cname-bypass-solution
Basically, you have to temporarily upgrade to the paid version of cloudflare to disable the flattening of the DNS and also to remove the Proxy setting of the records UNTIL mailchimp successfully authenticates. Afterwards you can downgrade to the free account once it's been authenticated if desired. Very good article. Hopefully this helps someone else.
Thanks Phil. I use the CloudFlare free plan for many domains and haven’t had any issues (without having to disable flattening) with authenticating in Mailchimp and using the CloudFlare DNS with TLDs (e.g. *.com) or ccTLDs (e.g. *.au). I have noticed issues however with specific gTLDs such as *.training and *.marketing so perhaps disabling flattening with help with the gTLD authentication issues.
Hi there – thanks for the article. I think I am probably the most clueless reader here, but I’m wondering how to identify and contact the “webhost” for my domain. I’m just trying to use my gmail address. That is the “domain” listed in MailChimp that I have verified, but I don’t know who or what the “webhost” is. I do have a domain for my website – lisadoggett.com – but that is not connected to my MailChimp or email, so I don’t think it would be relevant here. I’m stuck on the early step above on contacting the webhost. Please let me know what you advise. Thanks!
Hi Lisa, you won’t be able to authenticate a domain that you haven’t purchased. On a side note, it is a bad idea to send email marketing from Mailchimp or any other email marketing service using a free domain (https://mailchimp.com/help/limitations-of-free-email-addresses/); your delivery rates will be significantly lower than if you use your lisadoggett.com domain. Add your lisadoggett.com domain to Mailchimp and then authenticate it; you’ll get far better results (contact https://www.authorsguild.org/ to authenticate your domain once you’ve added it to Mailchimp).
Thank you so much for your help! I have been in touch with Author’s Guild this week, and they informed me that it would mess up my website hosting if they authenticated my domain connected to my website. So I have purchased a new domain through MailChimp. I can’t tell, though, if that domain was automatically authenticated – it doesn’t give me an option to authenticate, just to “manage.” And I don’t know how to “connect” it with my MailChimp campaign to ensure that my campaign will end up in people’s inboxes. This may be beyond your scope, but if you have any further suggestions for me, I would be very grateful. Thanks!
His Lisa, I’ve sent you an email 🙂