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What is a DMARC policy and how does it affect the sending of my emails?

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is an email authentication protocol that protects email domains from unauthorized use, such as phishing or spoofing. As a domain owner, you can enforce a policy for your DMARC record to define what should happen to email messages that fail the DMARC authentication checks. 

❗️ Important
Enforcing a DMARC policy for your domain or subdomain is essential to protect it. However, DMARC is a complex protocol which is why we do not support the setup of DMARC at Brevo. We highly recommend that you get help from a professional or refer to trusted online resources to implement it, such as MxToolBox.

You can choose between three different policies:

  • none 
    Takes no action on the message and delivers it to the intended recipient.
  • quarantine
    Marks the message as spam and sends it to the recipient's spam folder. Recipients can review the spam message to identify legitimate messages.
  • reject
    Rejects the messages. With this policy, emails usually return soft bounces. 

Adding a DMARC record with a strict policy (quarantine or reject) to your domain or subdomain is a good way to protect it. However, you might encounter the following error message when trying to schedule your email sending:

critical-error-icon.png Your DMARC policy requires for your domain to be authenticated. Learn more about how to authenticate your domain. If you have authenticated your domain and still have issues, .

Why should I authenticate my domain?

If you have a DMARC record with a strict policy and haven't authenticated your domain or subdomain on Brevo, you might experience email deliverability issues with Brevo. Your emails might end up in spam folders or return soft bounces. To send email campaigns with Brevo while having a strict DMARC policy, you have to verify and authenticate your domain by adding the Brevo code and DKIM DNS records to your domain hosting platform. 

After verifying and authenticating your domain on Brevo, the error message should have disappeared, and you can safely send your email campaigns with Brevo 🎉.  

⏭ What's next? 

🤔 Have a question?

If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.

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