Mailchimp sending domains

Comments

1. Glynne Suckling says

   April 12, 2016 at 11:34 am

   Hi there
   I have started using Mailchimp but am having difficulty in setting up DKIM, SPF and DMARC records so that my recipients see the email is from my domain (rather than an “on behalf” message). I’ve used the guidelines that MC recommend, but I am getting unstuck as the server address they recommend for the SPF record (include:servers.mcsv.net) is not necessarily the same as the server they use (e.g. when someone signed up on my website, Mailchimp used mail1.mcsignup.com).

   Of course this failed the DMARC authentication so the subscriber never received the double-optin email and were discarded from the list. So does that mean, I potentially have to include a whole range of domains that they might use for sending mail in my SPF record? Any suggestions on what ones?

   Thanks for your help.
   Glynne

   Reply

   • Gary says

     April 12, 2016 at 2:35 pm

     Hi Glynne,
     A very valid point! I’m trying to get to the bottom of this.

     Reply

     • Glynne Suckling says

       April 19, 2016 at 11:32 am

       Hi Gary, did you get an answer on this?

       Reply

       • Gary says

         April 21, 2016 at 9:55 am

         Hi Glynne, not yet however I have chased the question.

         Reply

         • Gary says

           April 22, 2016 at 10:35 am

           Glynne, here is the response from Mailchimp:

           The records specifying mcsv.net will cover all of our sending domains. These records are setup to redirect receiving email servers to check our servers for the most up to date entries. This will not require regular updates or maintenance on your end.

           I’ll be keeping and eye on this.

         • Glynne says

           April 22, 2016 at 2:33 pm

           Thanks for digging into this. I’m not 100% convinced of their reply, as sign up notifications stopped coming through when I setup the dmarc road and restarted when I made the changes I mentioned above. Do you utilise dmarc records at all? I’m going to run some experiments with different variations of the dmarc record and monitor what happens.

         • Gary says

           April 24, 2016 at 6:42 pm

           Glynne,
           Like you I’m not convinced! Yes I do use DMARC for my domain and just need to find the time to test whether the response from Mailchimp works.

         • Gary says

           May 8, 2016 at 9:15 am

           Glynne, in my DMARC testing the SPF and DKIM records as supplied by Mailchimp are resulting in a ‘pass’ therefore it looks like they are correct. Have you managed to test?

         • Glynne Suckling says

           May 8, 2016 at 3:19 pm

           Hi Gary, I’m glad to hear that you’ve had success – I havent done any more since we last communicated. I’ll do some more testing now to check I’ve got the correct configuration. Originally when I included that single include statement it failed the welcome email when someone subscribed and they didn’t get it. I have found the free reporting tool from this website really useful: http://dmarc.postmarkapp.com. You include an email address they give you into your dmarc record and every Monday they email you an aggregated report of emails processed, passed and failed along with the IP addresses. Very handy as I don’t need then to check every dmarc email I get during the week. Quite scary to see how many times people are trying to spoof my email address! I also found that I need to include a statement for non-Mailchimp webform and and WordPress notifications sent by my webhost (Hostgator) as these were also getting knocked out. Cheers
           Glynne

         • Gary says

           May 9, 2016 at 7:58 pm

           Hi Glynne, I’m also shocked by just how much my email address is being used for nefarious purposes. I’ve just setup dmarc.postmarkapp.com – thx for the tip.

         • Glynne Suckling says

           May 25, 2016 at 4:49 am

           Hi Gary
           I’ve been monitoring the DMARC results from the weekly report, and not a single legitimate email is either passing SPF or DKIM tests. I’ve compared my records to yours and they are appear to be configured similarly. I’ve authenticated my domain within Mailchimp, so at least the DKIM record should be working, but that doesn’t appear to be. I’m at a loss as to what to do next – any suggestions?

         • Gary says

           May 26, 2016 at 9:40 am

           Hey Glynne,
           I’ve checked on my side for my domain (BTW your recommendation to use Postmark for a weekly report has proven extremely valuable and a save of time) and mailchimp.com, rsgsv.net, mcdlv.net, mcsv.net etc. are all passing the SPF and DKIM checks. It’s probably worth contacting Mailchimp themselves to clarify.
           Cheers

           P.S. Pls keep me updated 🙂

2. Stacy Mark says

   October 20, 2016 at 8:22 am

   Glynne, if you haven’t had success yet, try adding this to your spf record too … include:spf.mandrillapp.com

   Reply

   • Glynne Suckling says

     October 20, 2016 at 1:03 pm

     Thanks Stacy, I did get it sorted. It was actually an internal configuration issue on my account and Mailchimp had to do do a couple of tweaks before it came right. Now everything is all sending as expected.

     Reply