What is “the Cloud”?
“The Cloud” is simply a term for using data storage, email, infrastructure, or applications as a service without the need for installing software and maintaining servers in your own data centers. Cloud-based services were made possible by cheap RAM, multi-cored processors and the easy availability of network bandwidth.
What is Cloud-based email?
Cloud-based email has been around since the early days of the Internet, where individual users could sign up for a Yahoo!, Hotmail or Gmail email account. Now, cloud-based email is associated with the same providers: Google G Suite Business and Office365/Outlook.com. The difference is that businesses, not consumers, migrate email processing for their domains from traditional on-premise email servers to these online service providers. This improves accessibility to email since employees only need an Internet connection to retrieve email (not a VPN to firewall-protected corporate servers) and reduces overhead costs for the company, while also improving email security, because a large team is now dedicated to the topic. One of the many selling points of cloud-based email is that it automatically improves your domain’s email deliverability. However, this is not entirely true. With cloud-based email set to double in size in the next few years1, managing email deliverability is now even more important.
Email Deliverability with the Cloud
While inbox providers, like Google and Microsoft, dominate cloud-based email, many other cloud services send email from their own servers, for example: CRMs, Marketing Automation, Email Campaign Management, Support systems, ERPs and Order Management/Fulfillment systems. Managing all of these different vendors requires careful thought, information and leveraging email deliverability standards like SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Email deliverability does not automatically improve by migrating to the cloud, but the cloud can help.
DMARC Is Essential
Regardless of what email services you use, adopting DMARC is the single most important step you can take to improving email deliverability. DMARC leverages two important standards, SPF and DKIM, to enable you to delegate legitimate sources of email and cryptographically sign your messages so that recipients know the email is from your domain. When properly implemented and monitored, DMARC helps businesses by:
- Improving Email Delivery – Sending email that is DMARC compliant can improve email delivery to your customers because inbox providers prioritize properly compliant emails.
- Increasing Email Visibility – Imagine getting feedback on the compliance of your email from recipients? DMARC enables email inbox provider to report on ALL outbound messages sent “from” your company and any third-party providers utilized (Sendgrid, Marketo, etc.)
- Identifying Delivery Problems – Gives your business insight into providers and email sources that have email authentication issues with SPF and DKIM that affect email delivery.
- Preventing Spoofing/Phishing Attacks – Once properly implemented, DMARC can prevent fraudsters from targeting your customers using your domain reputation.
Even with DMARC, SPF and DKIM implemented you need to continuously monitor the feedback you receive from your email recipients’ inbox providers and act on the data. DMARC reports can be confusing to interpret and they also do not contain information about blacklisting, the most fundamental email hygiene issue.
Adaptive Blacklist: A New Ally
Email delivery is still dependent upon the blacklist status of the sending IP address. Email from an IP address that is blacklisted will typically be blocked even before DMARC compliance checks are made. After you have outsourced email distribution to 3rd parties, how do you keep track of their blacklist status? How do you know these providers are performing?
You need blacklist monitoring for your senders. MxToolbox has developed a revolutionary approach to check blacklist status of 3rd party vendors – Adaptive Blacklist Monitoring. MxToolbox’s Adaptive Blacklist Monitoring leverages DMARC reports to understand what IP addresses your 3rd party vendors are using to send your email and then constantly analyzes the blacklist status of your sending IPs. Adaptive Blacklist monitoring even adapts to the addition of new providers and reports on email threats. With MxToolbox, you get expert insight into your DMARC compliance combined with unique Adaptive Blacklist Monitoring. No other DMARC delivery solution does the same.