Adding SPF and DKIM Records and Verifying Ownership of Your Sending Domain Through your Domains DNS Settings or Cpanel.

In Merging Your Mandrill Account With MailChimp – Part 1, we covered the process for merging your Mandrill with a MailChimp account. In this blog we continue to discuss the domain authentication to ensure those transactional emails keep flowing!

How to Set Up Sending Domains

Adding SPF and DKIM records and verifying ownership of your sending domains provides authentication to prove an email isn’t forged. Authentication helps legitimate senders prove that their email isn’t forged, and can help receiving servers like ISPs and corporate email servers control inbound spam. This is important because it prevents you from having to configure settings for different email clients and establishes a positive reputation for your domain. Essentially, it saves a lot of extra work in dealing with the variety of email clients your users receiving your emails use, and avoids having your “sent” emails ending up in junk or spam folders.

There are great articles to learn more about SPF and DKIM and domain verification  in your Mandrill account.

Verify the Domain

Log on to Mandrill and navigate to Settings/Domains/Sending-domains then click “Verify A Domain” and enter an email address for the domain you wish to verify.

You will receive an email with a confirmation link – click the link and you’ve verified the domain can accept incoming email.

Set Up SPF and DKIM for Your Sending Domains

To add the SPF and DKIM records for your sending domains, you’ll need to add ‘TXT’ records through your hosting provider, domain registrar, or DNS provider usually through a cPanel. We will demonstrate by logging onto our domain (using GoDaddy as an example), navigating to manage DNS settings and the location of files or records stored on the domain’s server.

SPF Record

If you don’t yet have an SPF record, add one for your domain by using the “Add Record.”

At a minimum, the value should be the following if you’re only sending mail through Mandrill for that domain:

 

 

If you already have a TXT record with SPF information, you’ll need to add Mandrill’s servers to that record by adding include:spf.mandrillapp.com in the record (before the last operator, which is usually ?all, ~all, or -all).

In GoDaddy this is done through a popup widget where you enter the above values as shown:

DKIM Record

Repeat the process for the DKIM using the “Add Record”

In GoDaddy, this is done through a popup widget where you enter the above values as shown:

DNS Providers

Here are useful links and information for several hosting and DNS providers provided by Mandrill’s help files that can guide you through your set up:

Provider	Links	Formatting Notes
CPanel (general) Many hosting providers offer CPanel to manage your domain. CPanel instructions are often similar among hosts that offer this option.	Bluehost GoDaddy	DKIM record typically escaped automatically. The ‘name’ of your DKIM record should be where yourdomain.com is replaced by the domain name where you’re adding the record. Most hosts that utilize cPanel don’t automatically add the domain name to the end of the record name. mandrill._domainkey.yourdomain.com
Amazon Route 53	Route 53 console Route 53 API
CloudFlare	SPF records	DKIM record escaped automatically.
	DKIM records
DNS Made Easy	DNS Made Easy	The ‘Value’ field where you enter the content for each record must be enclosed in quotes.
DreamHost	DreamHost
DynDNS	DynDNS	The ‘data’ field where you enter the value for each record must be enclosed in double quotes.
GoDaddy	Plesk Panel 9
	Plesk Panel 10
Hover	Hover
ZoneEdit	ZoneEdit

Download a PDF of this blog: Mandrill MailChimp 2

Is Your Mandrill Account In Jeopardy of Being Disabled?

Mandrill recently announced that it would no longer be offered as a standalone service, but as an add on for paid monthly MailChimp accounts.

As of April 27, 2016 your Mandrill account will be disabled if you don’t have a paid monthly MailChimp account merged with your Mandrill account.

Sign up for a MailChimp account to avoid the cancellation and your transactional emails will continue to flow! As of March 16, 2016 all new Mandrill accounts will be created and accessed through MailChimp. Read more on the changes via the MailChimp blog.

What Do You Need to Do?

• If you already have a paid monthly MailChimp account follow these instructions to merge your accounts.
• If you don’t have a paid monthly MailChimp account, create one at mailchimp.com. We will walk you through the process of merging the accounts:

NOTE – Starting April 27, 2016 Mandrill will not send any email from unverified domains or domains without valid SPF and DKIM records, including public domains like gmail.com and yahoo.com. If you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to add SPF and DKIM records and verify ownership of your sending domains. Here’s an article explaining how to do that – we also explain below.

Connecting Your Mandrill and MailChimp Accounts 

Go to mailchimp.com and sign up for a paid account. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be sent an email to Activate Account. In order to continue using Mandrill, your MailChimp account will need to be upgraded to a monthly plan. Any paid monthly MailChimp plan will do – plans start at $10/month.

Mandrill is a paid add-on for any MailChimp monthly plan in which users purchase “blocks” of 25,000 emails. The price of each block starts at $20, but decreases as you purchase additional monthly blocks. Once you’ve created your MailChimp account and successfully upgraded to a paid monthly plan follow these steps to merge your accounts and convert your Mandrill account to a paid MailChimp add-on:

1. Ensure that each of your sending domains in Mandrill is fully configured. After merging with a MailChimp account, any mail sent through Mandrill from unverified domains or domains without valid SPF and DKIM records will be rejected.
   Note: See Part 2 of this blog where we explain adding SPF and DKIM records and verifying ownership of your sending domain through your domains DNS settings or cPanel.
2. Log in to the MailChimp account that you want to connect with your Mandrill account.
3. Navigate to the Transactional page in your MailChimp account and click Upgrade.

4. Click Add Mandrill and select Yes, I have an existing Mandrill account.

5. When prompted, enter the username, password, and any multi-factor authentication information (if applicable) for the Mandrill account being linked to authorize that connection. Click Continue with the Linking Process to configure billing for Mandrill.

6. Choose the number of transactional email blocks that you’ll purchase at the beginning of each billing cycle. Blocks expire at the end of each billing cycle. For more information, see How Mandrill Billing Works.  We purchased one block of 25,000 emails.

7. Configure your account to help prevent any disruption in sending due to exceeding the number of purchased email credits for that billing cycle. After setting a threshold of remaining email credits, you can choose to receive an alert or set up your account to automatically purchase additional top-off blocks when that threshold is reached.

8. After confirming the billing information, complete the checkout process by clicking Complete Purchase to finalize the merge between your MailChimp and Mandrill accounts. Please note that this step is irreversible—after a Mandrill account has been converted to a MailChimp add-on, it cannot be linked to any other MailChimp account.

Download a PDF of this blog here: Mandrill MailChimp 1

This posting will show you how to quickly create personalized icons on your Mac and Windows desktops in order to more easily locate important files and improve the aesthetic of your workspace.

Mac Tutorial

On a Mac, you can change the icon of an application, folder, or file on your desktop using the following steps:

Step 1: Open an image you want to use in Preview

Step 2: Copy the image

Step 3: Select “Get Info” on the file or folder you want to customize

Step 4: Click on the folder you’ve selected and press “Paste”

Result: The old generic folder icon has now been customized

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Windows Tutorial

In Windows, you can change desktop icons as well.

Step 1: Download an image or draw one in Paint and save it as .ico (Microsoft icon)

Step 2: Resize the image to 32 pixels x 32 pixels

Step 3: Right click on a desktop icon you want to change and click “Properties”

Step 4: Select “Change Icon”

Step 5: Find the icon you created and select “OK”

Result: Your desktop icon has been customized

Download a PDF of this blog here: Customize Your Icons