Increase the deliverability of your
feedback request emails

When you use CustomerSure to request feedback via email, you can control what email address your emails come ‘from’. The from header is what people see in their inbox.

Receiving an email from a familiar person or company is an important factor in people reading the email. Email systems such as Microsoft Outlook, Gmail etc. also look at who an email is from. They check the sender is who they say they are which helps reduce phishing attacks via email spoofing, as well as reducing spam for all of us.

By default, when you create an email template, our software will set the from header to the email address you are logged in with. You can change this per email template in the software.

Although the email from header is set by you, in the background, we explicitly tell email servers (via the sender header and email authentication methods DKIM & SPF) that CustomerSure is the sender of the email. Our sending reputation is something we protect and monitor to ensure it remains excellent.

With the default approach, you might see some email deliverability issues. This usually happens when you are sending the majority of your emails to other business users (rather than consumers) because some businesses run extra email software such as Mimecast to improve their overall email security. Often, (and rightly so) these security tools are strict, and they will not accept anyone sending email using your email address in the from field. Even with validated sender settings. Not without extra, explicit consent from you.

These email protection services may warn your customer’s IT team about the emails and let them through, it might mark them as spam, or in the worst case scenario, block them entirely. In case of a block (a type of email bounce), you will see the reason outlined on Feedback Requests → Emails History in the software.

We work with our customers to ensure emails get delivered and reduce bounces. There are a few options to consider, outlined below:

• Authorise our email server to send your emails (Recommended – instructions below.)
• Use your own email address. This is the default with no set up required by your IT team, but it may suffer the deliverability issues explained above.
• Use a CustomerSure email address like noreply@customersure.com. This should not suffer from delivery issues, but it does not provide a great user experience for your customers, because the email comes ‘from’ us who they may not recognise, instead of you. And also, they can’t reply to the email if they wish too, which is not recommended. Sometimes, this option can be helpful for internal testing if you are waiting on us/your IT to set up email authorisation and your own company is blocking your test emails!

Authorise our email server to send your emails

This is the route we recommend for the majority of our customers. It gives the best chance of getting your Feedback Request Emails delivered. The steps to set this up are outlined below:

Step 1

Tell us the email address that you would like the emails to go from and which DNS (Domain Name Server) host you use. Your DNS host is often — but not always — the same company that hosts your website. Examples include 123reg, and DNSMadeEasy. Knowing this means we can provide you with better instructions.

Step 2

We will add your domain (The bit after the ‘@’ symbol in your email address) as an authenticated sender in our email software. We can then send you 3 DNS entries for step 3.

Step 3

You (or the person who manages your DNS entries) will need to add the required (3 CNAME) entries to your DNS. This is what informs recipient email servers that you authorise us to send emails on your behalf.

Step 4

We will verify the DNS entries have been made correctly (this can take up to 24 hours). After we have validated the DNS entries we will update our software to send your email from you and with you set as the (authenticated) sender. Instead of us.

Use your own email server (Experimental)

If you would prefer to provide us with SMTP credentials for an email server you control, we are happy to use that to send your Feedback Request Emails. Please note, if you use this option, bounce and delivery tracking will no longer work, because we will not have visibility into any events reported back to your email server.

Dedicated IP address

If your monthly email volume warrants it (more than 25,000 emails per month), or you would simply prefer complete isolation of your email activity on our platform, we can set up a dedicated IP address for your account. Depending on your plan, we may need to charge a small monthly fee (approx. £30 per month per IP address). The process to set this up is similar to the 4 steps outlined above, but also includes setting up what’s known as reverse DNS. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss this option.