A Quick Guide to Email Domain Verification

Your readers should feel excited and happy when they see your email in their inbox.

That's why it’s so important to make sure your subscribers know that the email truly came from you. 

Which of these two messages would you trust more? An email from yourbusiness.com or one from [email protected]? 

Simply using your own domain in the From line makes your emails more credible and promising.

This is just one of many reasons you should make email domain verification one of your top email marketing priorities.

From the point of view of security, deliverability, and brand recognition, email domain verification is an important step in building your brand and your business.

What Is Email Domain Verification?

Email domain verification is the best and most reliable way to confirm that an email domain belongs exclusively to you or your business.

Once you verify, you can use any email address in that domain to send emails. 

More importantly, nobody else can send emails from your domain. This is how email domain verification prevents unsavory characters from using your domain for phishing or to send malicious emails. 

Proving that you own the domain is similar to email verification, but it takes everything one step higher. Let’s take a quick look at what this means.

When you verify an email, you can send messages from that specific email but not others. For example, [email protected] could send emails through their work email, but they would not be able to broadcast a newsletter from [email protected].

In contrast, if you verify the domain YourCompany.com, you are authorized to represent YourCompany through any email you choose to create. 

Importance of Email Domain Verification

If email domain verification didn’t exist, anyone could send an email from any domain, and it would be hard to tell if the email you received was authentic.

As a related problem, if you’re sending emails from an unverified domain, your messages are likely to go straight to the spam folder. Using an unverified domain can deeply harm your deliverability.

On top of all that, it's simply a good business practice to get a custom domain for your email, and this requires verification. 

Why Trust Us? All beehiiv writers are carefully vetted for their knowledge and experience. Jacob Bear has blogged on many topics related to email newsletters and marketing. He recently received the coveted “Top Voice”badge on LinkedIn. 

How Email Domain Verification Works

Every domain has a set of Domain Name System (DNS) records that connect your domain to an IP address. 

An IP address is analogous to a physical address because it refers to a specific device. When you browse the internet, your IP address identifies your phone, computer, or tablet. Your website’s IP address is probably a server owned or managed by your hosting service. 

The internet uses DNS to organize and identify domains. Browsers use DNS to find your website.

Email domain verification involves adding a new record to your domain’s DNS to verify that an email is truly coming from that domain. Here’s an example of how this process would start if you had a domain registered with GoDaddy.com:

The new DNS record will usually be a verification code or other data from your email service provider. 

Email domain verification is a rather technical process. If you have a webmaster or IT person on your team, it may be best to have them take care of it. 

Each domain registrar (i.e., Google Domains, GoDaddy, etc.) has their own way of doing this, and so does each email service provider. For example, here’s beehiiv’s process.

Your service provider can give you specific instructions; but in general, you’ll log into your email service, go to Settings, and look for an option called “Domain Settings,” “Add a Custom Domain,” or something similar.

Benefits of Implementing Email Domain Verification

Without email domain verification, your emails will come from your email service provider. The From line will say, for example, [email protected], [email protected], etc.

But once you’ve verified your email domain, the same line will display as [email protected].

Email domain verification helps with your branding because it gives you a clean, top-level domain. Verifying your email domain is one of the first steps in building a sender reputation and increasing email deliverability from your domain.

By implementing email domain verification, you can build your readers’ trust in the content you provide. It’s also another high-leverage way to promote yourself and your business.

Best Practices for Email Domain Verification

Once you’ve verified your domain, connect all your relevant emails to your domain. For example, [email protected], [email protected], etc.

You should also keep your website updated and active. At the very least, make sure you’re using the latest versions of every theme, plugin, or related software. Use dynamic content and a blog if you can. 

All of these measures will help with SEO as well as build additional authority for your domain. 

It’s also critical that you take security seriously. When the popular perl.com domain was stolen in early 2021, owner Brian D. Foy thought it was a technical glitch. He soon discovered the truth. Domain theft is a real thing.

Your first line of defense is a strong password for the account you used when you registered your domain. Put a limit on the number of users who are authorized to access your account. 

Also, be sure to register your domain in your own name, or in the name of your corporation, LLC, or other organization that you control. This will make it easier to recover your domain if there’s ever a security breach.

Finally, make sure you renew your domain registration before it expires. 

Verifying Email Domain: Closing Thoughts

When it comes to verifying an email domain, there are two schools of thought.

The first approach is simply to do without a custom domain. That's not necessarily a bad option. If you just want to create and curate content in a newsletter and a blog, beehiiv will host them both for you.

On the other hand, building a brand or an asset that you want to sell will usually require a custom domain. 

For example, AI With Vibes built their newsletter on the beehiiv platform, verified their custom domain, and got acquired in only seven months.

If you follow the instructions and best practices we've shown you, you will have your own custom domain. And once you've handled email domain verification, beehiiv will give you a lot of additional tools for your success.

Our no-code email template editor and custom landing pages allow you to keep full control over branding.

You’ll get a whole suite of programs to promote your business through boosts, recommendations, referrals, and magic links.

You can also use beehiiv’s AI tools to save time and effort, while our analytics help maximize the income you generate through your email domain.

In fact, once you've verified your email domain, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to start a beehiiv newsletter.