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Connecting your email domain so emails come from your own address

Connect your own email domain and your emails go out from your own address, such as loyalty@yourcompany.com, instead of noreply@leat.com. You add a few DNS records at your domain provider and verify them in the dashboard. Until a domain is verified, your emails still come from noreply@leat.com.

The address itself is set in a sender profile. The domain only makes that address usable. See Sender profiles: the name and address your emails come from for that part.

Where to find it

Click the gear icon at the top right of the dashboard to open Settings, then click Marketing under Functionalities. Your domains are in the Email Domains section. You only see Marketing if you're an admin with access to marketing.

Each domain in the list has a badge: Verified, or Pending verification. A domain that failed its last check also shows Pending verification, so open it to see what's wrong. On accounts with marketing and functional records, described below, the badge reads Verified or Not verified, and each domain also lists the record sets it has: Marketing, Functional.

Adding a domain

  1. In Email Domains, click Add domain. On the free plan you're asked to upgrade your plan first.
  2. Under Custom domain, enter the part of your address after the @. For loyalty@yourcompany.com, that's yourcompany.com. Leave out https:// and www.
  3. Click Create. You land on the domain's page with the records to add.

A few things are refused when you create it:

  • Capital letters. Type the domain in lowercase.
  • A domain that starts with www., or that contains 2 hyphens in a row.
  • A domain with "leat" or "piggy" as a word of its own, such as leat.yourcompany.com or piggy-rewards.com. You'll see "Part of your value contains a reserved word." A domain that only contains those letters, like leathergoods.com, is fine.

You can connect a subdomain, such as mail.yourcompany.com. Your sender addresses then have to end in exactly @mail.yourcompany.com, because a sender address only counts as verified when its domain matches the connected domain exactly.

Use custom DKIM selector

Leave this off unless you already manage DKIM for your domain yourself. When it's on, you enter your own selector, 2 to 12 letters and numbers with no spaces, and we check DKIM against that selector.

Adding the DNS records

If the domain's page shows 2 cards, Marketing emails and Functional emails, your records are described under Marketing and functional records below.

Otherwise, the domain's page lists 4 records under Verify. For each one, the table shows the Type, the Host and the Value to enter, plus a Status and a Validation line that tells you what we found.

  • MX, a mail server record.
  • SPF, a TXT record.
  • DKIM, a TXT record.
  • DMARC, a TXT record. This one is recommended rather than required, see below.

Add them in the DNS settings at the company that manages your domain, usually your hosting provider or domain registrar. Don't delete any records you already have, only add the new ones. Copy each Host exactly, because the records don't all go in the same place:

  • MX and SPF sit on a subdomain that's only used for sending through Leat: em followed by a number, in front of your domain. The email you send and receive on your domain today isn't affected by them.
  • DKIM sits on its own name, ending in ._domainkey.yourcompany.com.
  • DMARC sits on _dmarc.yourcompany.com, on your domain itself, so it covers all email sent from your domain.

If someone else manages your DNS, click Send to your developer at the top of the page. It opens a new email in your own mail program with all the records in it. Fill in who to send it to yourself. That email always includes our recommended DMARC record, so read DMARC below before you send it.

Marketing and functional records

On some accounts, the domain's page shows its records under DNS records in 2 cards: Marketing emails and Functional emails. Campaigns, automated emails and recurring emails are sent with the marketing records. Functional emails, the ones your contacts need such as a login code or a gift card, are sent with the functional records. The DMARC record has its own section below the cards.

Each card has a badge such as 2 of 3 verified. Every record in it shows its name, its type, the Host and the Value to enter, and a Verified or Not verified badge. After you click Verify, hover over a Not verified badge to see why that record failed.

The marketing records

3 records, in the Marketing emails card:

  • MX, an MX record on em followed by a number, in front of your domain.
  • SPF, a TXT record on the same em host.
  • DKIM, a TXT record on m1._domainkey.yourcompany.com, or on your own selector if you set one.

The functional records

3 CNAME records, in the Functional emails card:

  • Return-Path, on tx followed by a number, in front of your domain.
  • DKIM 1, on t1._domainkey.yourcompany.com.
  • DKIM 2, on t12._domainkey.yourcompany.com.

A custom DKIM selector only applies to marketing emails. Functional emails always use t1. Copy each Value exactly as the card shows it, because it's unique to your account.

Adding them at your DNS provider

Add all 6 records, plus DMARC if you don't have it yet, in the DNS settings at the company that manages your domain. Don't delete any records you already have. The Host in the cards is the full name, such as t1._domainkey.yourcompany.com. Many providers only want the part in front of your domain in the host field, t1._domainkey in that example. Others want the full name. Your provider's help pages say which.

Once a domain has functional records, it only shows Verified when both sets are verified. Until then it shows Not verified, even when every marketing record is fine. Send to your developer puts both sets in the email.

A domain you added before functional records existed shows No functional records yet in the Functional emails card. Click Add functional records to create the 3 CNAME records, add them at your DNS provider and click Verify.

Until the functional records are verified

Your functional emails don't stop. As long as the marketing records are verified, functional emails go out from your own address using the marketing records. Once every domain with verified marketing records has verified functional records as well, functional emails switch to them by themselves. The address they come from stays the same.

Older domains with functional MX and TXT records, and Wix

Functional records created before they moved to CNAME records look like the marketing ones: an MX and an SPF record on tx followed by a number, and a DKIM TXT record on t1._domainkey.yourcompany.com. If they're verified, they keep working and there's nothing to change.

The functional MX record has the same value as the marketing one. Some DNS providers, such as Wix, don't accept a second MX record with the same value, even on a different host, so these records can't be verified there. While they aren't verified, the Functional emails card shows Can't add the MX record? with a button to switch to CNAME records:

  1. Click Recreate as CNAME records. The card now shows 3 CNAME records: Return-Path, DKIM 1 and DKIM 2.
  2. At your DNS provider, remove the functional records you added before: the TXT records on tx followed by a number and on t1._domainkey.yourcompany.com, and the MX record on tx if your provider accepted it. The new CNAME records go on the same hosts, and a host with a CNAME record can't hold any other record. Leave your marketing records as they are.
  3. Add the 3 CNAME records exactly as the card shows them.
  4. Click Verify.

Your functional emails keep going out from your own address using the marketing records while you do this.

Verifying the domain

When the records are in, come back to the domain's page and click Verify.

  • A green result means the domain is verified. From then on, sender profiles with an address on this domain send from that address.
  • A red result lists the MX, SPF and DKIM records with the reason each one failed, and the Validation column in the table says the same.

On a page with Marketing emails and Functional emails cards, you see "Your domain is verified" once every record in the cards is verified, or "Some records aren't verified yet" when one isn't. Each record then shows Verified or Not verified.

We don't check on our own, so nothing changes until you press Verify. DNS changes can take up to 24 hours to spread. If it fails right after you added the records, wait a while and press Verify again.

Verification doesn't look at DMARC. A domain can be verified without a DMARC record.

DMARC

DMARC tells mailbox providers what to do with email that claims to be from your domain but fails its checks. It isn't needed for verification, but adding it helps your email reach inboxes.

The DMARC row is checked every time you open the domain's page. On a page with Marketing emails and Functional emails cards, it's checked when you click Verify instead. When you don't have a record yet, the Value shows one you can use as it is: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@ followed by your domain. When you already have one, the row shows your own record and its policy.

Don't add a second DMARC record. A domain can only have 1, and with 2, mailbox providers ignore both. If your domain already has one, keep it and skip ours. The email from Send to your developer always contains our recommended record, even when you already have your own, so tell whoever adds the records to leave that one out.

Setup history

Setup history at the bottom of the page lists every change, newest first: when the domain was connected, and every verification that passed or failed, with who pressed Verify and which records changed.

Verification lost means the domain was verified before and failed a later check, so its DNS records have been changed or removed. Put the records back and press Verify again. Until then, emails from this domain go out from noreply@leat.com.

When emails still come from Leat's no-reply address

  • The domain isn't verified. Open it and check the badge and the Validation column, or the badges in the cards.
  • The sender profile is on a different domain. The email's sender profile has to use an address on exactly the verified domain. A profile on yourcompany.com isn't covered by a verified mail.yourcompany.com, and the other way round.
  • The email uses a different sender profile. Check the Sender profile field on the email itself.

Replies still reach you while this happens. Emails from noreply@leat.com carry your sender profile's address as the reply-to address.

Deleting a domain

At the bottom of the domain's page, under Danger zone, click Delete domain and confirm. This can't be undone. Sender profiles on that domain stay, but their emails go out from noreply@leat.com again until you connect and verify the domain once more.

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