How do the Email Bounceback Management and DKIM Features work?

Outgoing emails from your store are an important part of your business and it can be stressful when they don't arrive to their destination or get caught in the recipient's trash folder. Many times, it is through no fault of the store owner that messages don't go through, but rather the recipient service's anti-spam safeguards that prevent messages from getting through correctly. To prevent the misidentification of your store's outgoing emails as spam, Shift4Shop Version 9 introduces email bounceback management and DKIM signatures.

What is DKIM?

DomainKeys Identified Mail is an email authentication method that is intended to confirm to service providers that email coming from a domain is truly coming from that domain. DKIM attaches a digital signature linked to your domain on outgoing emails. This digital signature acts as a sort of "fingerprint" that allows the recipient service to look up the domain's public key and verify the email is indeed coming from the domain in question.

To turn on your store's DKIM functionality, please follow these steps:

1. Log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager
2. Using the left hand navigation menu, go to Modules
3. Once you're on the Modules page, use the search bar at the top to search for "DKIM" and bring up the module.
4. Place a mark in the "Enable" checkbox and click "Save" at the top right of the screen.

The above steps will add a special TXT record to your domain's DNS record which will act as its DKIM signature. You may have a look at the DNS entry that is created by using Shift4Shop's Manage DNS tool (also introduced in version 9).

How does Email Bounceback Management Work?

Spammers often send thousands of emails to large lists that can include old or otherwise nonfunctioning email addresses. So anyone that repeatedly sends emails to dead addresses runs the risk of looking like a spammer to a recipient's ISP.

Now, let's say your customer - when checking out - used a mispelled email address. Or perhaps they logged in with an email that no longer exists and didn't update it during checkout. When your store sends a confirmation email, followed by a "Your Order Has Shipped" email, then subsequently followed by newsletter or a "Please leave a review" emails... Well, after a bit these emails may inadvertently flag your store as sending spam.

Shift4Shop's email bounceback management works by analyzing any hard bounceback (i.e. User not found) messages that return. These addresses are then added to the store's Blacklist to avoid emailing them further.

You can review these Bouncback emails in two ways.

Method #1: Export your store email blacklist
The first option would be to export your store's blacklist email CSV file

1. Using the left hand navigation menu, go to Customers >Customer List
2. Look to the top right of the page, and click on the "Export / Import"

On the Left hand side of the page, you will see a series of CSV export options.

4. Click on the + icon next to Blacklist Emails
5. Export your list

The Generated CSV file will contain a column labeled "bounceback" which will denote if the email address was blacklisted as a result of a hard bounceback. If the email in question has a 1 in the column, then it was blacklisted as a result of a hard bounceback.

Method #2: Look at your store's blacklist
The second option would be to simply view the store's email blacklist.

1. Log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager
2. Using the left hand navigation menu, go to Marketing >Newsletters
3. On the Newletter page, click on the "Actions" button located at the top right and select "Manage Subscribers"
4. Next, look to the top right of the page and click on "View Blacklist"

The view will show you the store's blacklist email addresses, and a new column will be seen that will denote if the blacklisting is the result of a bounceback or not.