DMARC failure causing high soft bounce rate

[Sarin]

Also there is very high soft bounce rate for one of our marketing emails . When I check the activity log for these leads it says -

Gmail Ids- 550-5.7.26 Unauthenticated email from domain  is not accepted due to domain's DMARC policy. Please contact the administrator of domain if this was a legitimate mail

iCloud Ids- 554 5.7.1 Your message was rejected due to domaim's DMARC policy.

The email got delivered for leads on other domains such as outlook, live etc..

The email domain's SPF and DKIM status is showing as pending ,

It seems DKIM or SPF info for this domain is configured correctly in domain's DNS record, can this be a reason for high soft bounce rates?

[Mariah_Mattick]

Hi Sarin! It sounds like the SPF and DKIM configuration still need to be finalized if it's in the 'Pending' status - this is probably with an IT team member to finish validating. I haven't seen DMARC show in the Marketo Admin section before, but know that that's another piece to help deliverability efforts. You'd have to go through a similar process of working with IT to configure a DMARC record.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

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Gmail Ids- 550-5.7.26 Unauthenticated email from domain  is not accepted due to domain's DMARC policy. Please contact the administrator of domain if this was a legitimate mail

iCloud Ids- 554 5.7.1 Your message was rejected due to domaim's DMARC policy.

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They're doing the right thing by obeying the policies set by your domain/DNS admin.

DMARC policies work hand-in-hand with SPF and DKIM.

A DMARC policy set by example.com can say "Email with a From: header @example.com must be DKIM-signed by example.com or pass SPF for example.com — or else it must be rejected."

Or it can say "Email with a From: header@example.com should be DKIM-signed or SPF-passed, but you can let it through anyway as long as the DNS admin gets a notification [that they will probably ignore]."

If you're getting DMARC rejections, if you have a shared Marketo instance that means your DMARC record requires DKIM but your DKIM DNS record isn't set up correctly. Which is consistent with you saying DKIM is Pending in the UI.  Why do you say "it seems DKIM or SPF info... is configured correctly?"  What's the actual domain?

[Sarin]

Thanks @SanfordWhiteman 

Actually when i check the Admin section, it shows both SPF and DKIM status as pending for this domain (deakin.edu.au) , and when i click on check DNS  then it shows an error and also received a notification saying SPF Configuration Error..

[SanfordWhiteman]

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Actually when i check the Admin section, it shows both SPF and DKIM status as pending for this domain (deakin.edu.au) , and when i click on check DNS  then it shows an error and also received a notification saying SPF Configuration Error..

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If you're on a shared Marketo instance, SPF doesn't matter, but it's true that you didn't add Marketo your SPF. Don't worry about that.

The important part is you didn't add the Marketo DKIM record. But, as I said, you do have a DMARC record that requires DKIM. Hence the services are right to reject your mail.

[Sarin]

Thanks @SanfordWhiteman