When Okendo sends emails on your behalf to your customers they are sent from an Okendo email domain (@okendo.io) combined with the "from name" and "reply-to" details from your Mail Settings. For example, if your "from name" is "T-Shirt Store" and your "reply-to" is "support@tshirtstore.com" the email will appear like this in Gmail:
The email will appear as if it's from your store and any replies will also be sent to your store's reply-to address. However, if the customer were to expand the sender details of the email they would see Okendo as the sending email domain:
Some stores may want to go further and change this sending address to be from their email domain rather than from the Okendo domain. Follow these steps to set up email sending from your domain:
Configuring A Custom Email Sending Domain
Before You Get Started
This guide requires you (or your developer/site admin) to have access to your DNS host settings. Ensure that you have access to this before you get started in the domain verification process.
Setup
Open the Okendo app and navigate to Settings > Mail > Domains.
Step 1: Choose Domain
Enter the domain you would like to send from and an email address on that domain that should be sent a verification email to ensure you own that domain.
Click Send Verification Link to trigger the verification email. You should receive the verification email within a few minutes.
Click the verification link in the email to continue.
Step 2: Configure Records
To safely send emails from your domain without raising spam warnings for your recipients you'll need to add these records to your DNS host settings. These records allow our email service to verify that the domain you've asked to send from is an actual domain under your control.
Add these name/value pairs to your DNS configuration. This may require help from your developer or site admin. If you need to email them the details you can click the Copy All button and send the details to them via another channel. For more information about setting up DNS records see the bottom of this page: Adding Records To Your DNS Host.
Click Verify Setup.
If you click verify, and only half of the records verify, this usually means that you need to wait a bit longer (sometimes up to 48 hours). It's also possible that you entered one of your records in incorrectly. Double check the records are configured correctly in your DNS host settings. If you're sure you've set it up correctly, wait a bit longer and then click Verify Setup again. If the issue persists, contact Okendo Support.
Step 3: Send From New Domain
Once all the records are verified, you'll be able to send emails from an address on that domain.
Go to Settings > Mail > General.
Under the Sending Details section, choose your new domain from the Send from domain dropdown.
Configure the newly shown From name and From email address fields.
Click Save.
Your emails will now be sent from the email address configured in the From email address field. You can verify this by sending a test email from your Sequence.
Note: If you ever want to configure a new domain then you can select Configure a Different Domain. This will restart the process so that you can configure a new domain. You can only have one custom domain active at any one time.
Adding Records to Your DNS Host
The process for adding records to your DNS host can vary depending on your hosting provider. Some common hosting providers are: Amazon Route 53, GoDaddy, Hover, CloudFlare, etc. We'll outline the process for adding new records to an existing domain in Amazon Route 53 although it's often best to request the help of a developer or site admin who would be familiar with this process.
Login to Amazon Route 53
Login to your AWS account
Select Services > Route 53 > Hosted Zones > {Your_hosted_zone}
Create Records
Click Create Record Set.
Under Type, select CNAME.
For Name, paste the hostname value displayed in the HOSTNAME field in Okendo. Remember to remove the domain suffix if your provider automatically adds it for you (Amazon Route 53 does). See the note below for more details.
For Value, paste the contents of the VALUE field corresponding to the HOSTNAME used in Step 3.
No changes need to be made to the TTL or Routing Policy fields. They can be left with their default value.
Click Create.
Repeat for each record listed in Okendo.
An example, completed record configuration is shown here:
Note: Amazon Route 53, GoDaddy, and Namecheap, are among the providers that automatically add your domain to your new DNS record values, which can result in a CNAME entry with too much information that fails authentication. An example of this would be em123.yourdomain.com.yourdomain.com.
Be sure to check your CNAME for this behaviour if your domain doesn't validate initially.
Below is an example of the CNAME values under the HOST column as they are displayed and how you will need to enter them into your DNS management with one of these providers:
HOST/NAME em123.yourdomain.com - enter CNAME record HOST/NAME as: em123
HOST/NAME s1._domainkey.yourdomain.com - enter CNAME record HOST/NAME as: s1._domainkey
HOST/NAME s2._domainkey.yourdomain.com - enter CNAME record HOST/NAME as: s2._domainkey
Entries made in the VALUE or POINTS TO field do not need to be trimmed in this way.