For the best possible user experience, marketing success, and email security, we recommend all Feathr users connect their organization's domain to their Feathr account. Instructions for how to do so can be found here:
Connecting a Domain to your Feathr Account
This article will focus on information and tips for understanding domain registrars to ensure that connecting your domain to your Feathr account goes as smoothly as possible.
What are Domain Services like DNS and Domain Registrar?
A domain registrar is a service that manages the registration of domain names on the web, as well as the assignment of IP addresses and email hosting. In essence, domain registrars lease you the rights to a custom web and email address, and ensure that the address you lease actually gets published on the internet. For example, if your website is www.your-business's-name.com and your email ends in @your-business's-name.com, someone at your company registered that name and pays registration fees to keep it. Think of your domain registrar as the "landlord" for the address of your website and email.
Why Should I Connect my Domain to Feathr?
When you connect your domain to Feathr, what you are actually doing is routing any email campaigns you send in Feathr through your organization's domain. This enables a series of security protocols called SPF and DKIM that verify to your recipients' email servers that the emails you are sending are actually from you.
This accomplishes two primary goals: it improves email security by blocking spoofing and phishing attempts, and improves email deliverability to your list. Deliverability improvements also come from the server verification that proves your emails are coming from you, which gets your emails into inboxes and out of spam folders.
In addition to email improvements, Feathr's domain authentication process also enables you to host any landing pages you design in Feathr on your own website domain rather than on Feathr's default domain, which is l.feathr.co. This improves the continuity of your web visitors' experience.
Who is My Domain Registrar?
It may sound old fashioned, but the actual best way to determine your domain registrar is to ask whomever at your organization is responsible for your website and email. If you don't have an IT department or a designated webmaster, you may have an outside agency or contractor.
Domains must be re-registered on an annual or semi-annual basis, so it is likely that a current employee or contractor has that information and can provide a login for you, or add the domain records themselves that you download from Feathr.
If the human interaction route fails, another reliable way to to discover your registrar is to enter your organization's website into the domain lookup at whois.com. Enter your organization's web address and you can view domain registrar information.
Here you can see the results from Feathr's own website. Note here that the registrar and the name servers have different names. In this case, NameCheap acts as a broker and the actual domain records are managed by Cloudflare, a full-service web security company.
If your registrar and name servers are different, ask your IT, webmaster, or web contractor where domain records can be added.
What to Ask Your IT Department, Webmaster, or Web Contractor
Feathr's domain authentication wizard makes this foolproof. When adding a domain to Feathr, the last step of the process provides a simple form email that explains the domain request and attaches the records your IT contact will need in order to complete the domain authentication on your behalf. Simply add the email address of your IT contact into the form email and click send.
Adding The Records Yourself
If you are responsible for adding domain records yourself, you will need to download the domain records found at the bottom of the last step of the Feathr domain wizard, then log in to your domain registrar, locate the correct place to enter the records, enter them, and save.
Because those steps differ slightly for every domain registrar, and because there are so many domain registrars, it is impossible for us to provide detailed instructions for each. We can, however, offer pointers.
- Adding domain records is a fundamental function of any domain registrar. It is in their best interest to make that process as user-friendly as possible. Every domain registrar should have help documentation to guide you through how to add records on their particular platform.
- If the help documentation fails you, domain registrars almost always offer email or phone support from a real human. If you're unsure what to ask for, say something along the lines of "I have a few content serving and email records I need to add to my domain but I've never done it before. Can you help guide me through the process? I already have the record values."
- If you are contacting your registrar's support via email, simply attach the .csv file you downloaded from Feathr. This will give the registrar's support rep all the information they need to help you.
- If you think you have successfully added the records yourself, but you still see your domain status in Feathr as pending after 48 hours, you will need to contact your registrar's support.
Lastly, because we're thoughtful and we want you to succeed, we have compiled help documentation from a handful of the most commonly-used domain registrars. If you don't see your registrar on this list, a simple web search for the registrar's name and how to add domain records should get you the information you need.