There have been changes with email providers such as Google and Yahoo. Ensure your customers still receive your emails by connecting your own professional email and domain.
Overview
Major email providers like Google and Yahoo are now mandating that senders of bulk emails establish DNS records for their domains. You will need to create and connect a website domain in order to prevent your emails from being flagged as spam and ensure your customers receive communication properly.
Permissions and Accessibility
Staff Access:
- Admin
- Full access
- Manager
- No access
- Staff
- No access
MyStudio Plan Restrictions:
- The amount of emails you can send per day is determined by your MyStudio plan. This does not include system emails such as registration confirmations.
- Starter: 500
- Growth: 2000
- Scale: 5000
Specifications
Email Provider Bulk Email Changes
When you log into your MyStudio account or attempt to send an email, you may see a popup regarding updates to how emails are delivered. This popup will occur if you:
- Do not have a domain email listed in My Account > Business Profile
- Do not have a verified email address in My Account > Business Profile
Your emails may be sent to the recipient’s spam folder if you do not connect a domain email or if you do not add an SPF record to your domain’s DNS settings and verify your email.
For more information about the changes for how email providers are handling bulk emails, please see this article: An Overview of Bulk Sender Changes at Yahoo/Google.
NOTE: Your users will still receive emails that you send without you following these steps. Getting a domain and professional email simply ensures that these messages don't go to your customers' spam folder. If you do not follow these steps, you will receive the above popup every time you login to MyStudio until you get a verified email and connect it to your domain.
If you already have a professional email added in the business profile section, you may need to verify again, and you will need to still add the SPF record to your domain.
Step 1: Get a Domain
If you don’t already have a domain for your business, you will need to buy one and create or connect a professional email. There are many benefits to having a domain, including establishing brand identity, ensuring credibility and trust, and boosting SEOs, to name a few. You can even get a domain from any established domain registrar such as GoDaddy or Namecheap, but we encourage you to do some research on which registrar would be the best decision for you.
If you already have a domain, you can skip this step.
Step 2: Get a Professional Email
In My Account > Business Profile, if you have a Yahoo or Gmail email listed in the studio email field, you will need to replace this with a domain email instead to ensure your communications don’t get sent to your customers’ spam folders.
After buying a domain, you will also need to also purchase a professional email. Some sites such as Namecheap offer email hosting services within their platform. Others, such as GoDaddy partner with third parties like Microsoft 365 for email hosting. Regardless, the best way to ensure your customers can not only receive the email to their inboxes but also respond to them is by purchasing a professional email (example: info@domain.com).
Below are a couple examples for setting up the professional email. Please note that set up steps will vary between platforms and which email hosting site you choose is dependent on your educated decision. Please reach out to your email hosting platform's customer support if you need assistance with setting up the email.
Example: Google Workspace
Google Workspace functions as both a domain registrar and email hosting service and offers other services and integration along with it. For example, you’ll also get access to Google Meet and the other GSuite offerings. Click here to see Google Workspace’s pricing: Google Workspace Pricing.
To set up Google Workspace, go to workspace.google.com. Click “Start Free Trial” at the top right. You will then be prompted to fill out the following information:
- Your first and last name
- Your current email address
- The size of your team that will be utilizing Google Workspace applications
- Specify what domain you’re using. If you haven’t purchased a domain yet, you can do so here by selecting “new domain.” Otherwise, select “an existing domain.”
- If you select that you have an existing domain, enter the domain name. Confirm.
You will then need to set up your first domain email by filling out the following information:
- Add the username to login to Google Workspace. This will be the first email associated with the business domain. It is recommended to use your name for this email. If you want to have an email such as “help@business.com” or “admin@business.com” you can always add aliases to your actual email address you list here if you want to receive those emails.
- Enter your password
- Verify you’re not a robot
- If you have employees you would like to add to Google Workspace you can select “educate your users” if you would like to help them get started with their account. This is completely optional.
- You can also optionally select to share ideas with Google based on your usage. AKA: share your usage data with Google.
- Enter payment details. This will be charged after the free trial is up.
Google will need to verify the owner of the domain. Once you click through the prompts,
you will need to do the following:
- Protect your domain: you will add a verification code to your DNS (Domain Name System) records for your domain. If you purchased your domain through Google Domains, you will need to sign in to verify using the email you used to purchase the domain. If you purchased your domain through a different domain provider, Google will walk you through how to set up the DNS to work with Google Workspace.
- Create new users: This will be where you add other team members to your Workspace. You can always add these later from your admin panel
- Activate Gmail: Please note, it may take 1- 48 hours for updates to take effect.
Example: GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a domain registrar that offers email hosting in partnership with Microsoft 365 so you can utilize higher email storage as well as other Microsoft 365 Suite products. See here for GoDaddy’s email plan pricing: GoDaddy Email.
Once you purchase your domain from GoDaddy, go to your domain dashboard and select “get custom email.”
You will then be presented with two options for purchase, but you can also add a plan from the above link instead.
Add to cart and select how many months you want to pay.
Once you purchase the email, you will find Email & Office in your product section. Click on this section to begin setup of your professional email.
You will then choose which domain you want to use for the email. This includes if you did not use GoDaddy as the domain registrar.
Then, you will need to fill out the following:
- Email address: This also serves as the username for the email.
- First and last name.
- Account Permissions: Select "This email is for me" if you want to connect it to the GoDaddy account. Select "This email is NOT for me" for employee accounts.
- Enter a password.
- Add any alternate emails if desired.
Once completed, you will be given further instructions on how to access the email online or through the Microsoft Outlook app.
Step 3: Connecting to MyStudio
Once you have a professional email, go back into your MyStudio account and go to My Account > Business Profile and enter the new email. This will pull up a TXT-type SPF record for you to enter into your domain.
You will also need to verify your email by clicking “Click here to verify your email address.” This will send you a link to the professional email that you will need to click on to verify the email is legitimate. Verification can take up to 24 hours and this step can be done before or after adding the record to your domain.
Adding the SPF record can be done either automatically or manually.
Automatic SPF Connection with Entri
To automatically connect an SPF record, click on "Click Here" next to "To automatically add SPF record to prevent emails from going to spam." This will redirect you to connect your domain. Click "connect your domain" and "continue."
Enter your domain. Entri will automatically recognize the domain registrar your domain is under and will ask you to login to verify authorization to update the domain settings.
Once you login and confirm, Entri will enter the SPF record into your domain DNS records. This may take a few minutes. Full connection and verification reflections may take up to 72 hours depending on the domain registrar.
Manual SPF Connection
The process for manually entering the SPF record varies depending on the domain registrar. In your domain registrar, navigate to the section that displays your DNS records.
For example, if your domain registrar is GoDaddy, you would click your name at the top right > My Products > click DNS next to the domain listed > Add new record.
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You will then enter the following information:
- Type: TXT
- Name: the domain name listed
- Value: Copy and enter the value
- TTL: This selection does not bare any real differences for this connection, but a good rule of thumb is to do 1hr.
Full connection can take up to 72 hours, but once connected, the TXT record will disappear from the My Account section.
NOTE: If you have multiple locations, you only have to enter the TXT record once. MyStudio will automatically recognize the same domain across accounts. Any location after the original domain connection will only have to verify the email as a legitimate email.
If you need to update the record, you will simply need to enter a different email address into the Business Profile section in MyStudio.
FAQ
1. Do I have to get a domain and professional email?
While you don't HAVE to get a domain and professional email, your emails to your customers will likely end up in their spam folders or not received at all due to updates on Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc's end. Additionally, you will continue to get the popup about it in your MyStudio account until you connect one.
2. I already have a domain, do I still need a professional email?
Yes, the SPF record will only appear once you enter a domain email.
3. I already have a website setup with a domain either separately or connected to MyStudio. Will adding this DNS record affect my website?
No, this TXT-type SPF record should not affect your website.
4. I have multiple locations with MyStudio. Do they all have to have their own domain?
Not unless they already use a different domain or subdomains. Once a domain is entered and connected to MyStudio, MyStudio will automatically recognize any account with the same email domain. So while each account may need to have a separate email that they will each need to verify separately, the domain connection will only be done once.