How To Set Up Custom Blog Domain Emails To Ensure Newsletter Delivery

Since Google recently announced it will be moving its Gmail platform to strict DMARC regulation this coming June, following the lead of both Yahoo and AOL a few years ago, there has been a little panic about email newsletters getting caught in spam filters or listed as “undeliverable.”

Many bloggers are using Gmail addresses for all their incoming and outgoing blog email and with these new restrictions, the chances of those emails being reliability delivered is shrinking. Additionally many bloggers are now sending out their newsletter via services like Mailchimp, MadMimi or Convert Kit.  All of these platforms use your personal specified email as the ‘from’ address.  With the new DMARC regulation, those emails we most likely be rejected or blocked.

Luckily there is a pretty simple work around, and for many bloggers it won’t cost anything! If you are currently using a custom domain (meaning your blog URL doesn’t contain .blogspot.com) the chances are pretty good that you already have a custom domain email address available.
If you are still using a .blogspot domain NOW is the time to set up your custom URL because most domain hosts will also throw in some free email addresses! Those custom domain email addresses will get you around the DMARC problem.

As I have said before, if you are on Blogger, I think the easiest domain host to work with is GoDaddy. I use them, recommend them and all my tutorials feature them.  (I have more than 12 domains and 2 independent sites with GoDaddy.)

Typically you can get a really good deal for at least the first few years. (I think I only paid 99c for most of my domains)

GoDaddy actually offers two different services.  Email hosting, where you can set up an email account with them, and they will host and store your emails.**

..OR.. you can set up email forwarding.  This is where they give you a custom email address, but never actually store the emails. Instead they forward it on to another service you already use.

Email hosting costs about $5 per month per email.  While email forwarding is.. WAIT FOR IT.. TOTALLY FREE.

Not only is it free. But you get 100 EMAIL ADDRESSES FOR EVERY DOMAIN YOU OWN!!

For example you can set up: YourName@yourblogname.com along with Help@yourblogname.com.  They can both forward to the same gmail address or to different ones.  And you can even set up something like Complaints@yourblogname.com and have that forward straight to the trash!   (ha! kidding!)

**I do think you will should set up at least ONE ADDRESS using the $5/month email plan, just so you are not on a free service like Yahoo or Google (especially since there are also some MAJOR downfalls to using email forwarding, which I will address later.) However the process for forwarding your free custom domains to your self-hosted email account is the same!  

Setting up Email Forwarding for a Single Domain:

First log into your GoDaddy account and click on “Manage” Workspace Email


If you have no email addresses set up yet, you will see a prompt to create a new one.  You can click on that and select “forward” or you can just select “Create Forward” from the main menu:

This will trigger a pop up where you can type in the new email address you want to create (make sure that you use your domain after the ‘@‘) as well as list the current email address you want to forward your emails to.

There are some other options in this window (like “catch all” which will send ALL email that is dressed to “anything.written.here@yourdomain.com”) I don’t use that since it seems like spam magnet. If someone makes a mistake on the address the email will bounce.

You also can set up an auto reply to anyone emailing you.  I don’t use that feature either.

Once your emails are set up they will appear in your list. If you hover over the listings you will see all the details including where they are forwarding to. 

Setting up Email Forwarding for Multiple Domains

If you are like me, and have a bunch of domains, you can set up emails quickly by allowing the “forward this email address” box to autofill.  Here you can see when I type “Kim@“ it pulls up all the options I have for email aliases.
As I generate them for each of my URLs they are added to the list. 

Testing Your New Custom Addresses

Sometimes there is a little delay and your address may be “pending.”  To ensure that it is working you can try sending a test email to yourself at your new email address.

So I just set up kim@kimsixbloggersupport.com and I typed it into my “To” line of my email client. 
Approximately 2 minutes later this showed up in my inbox.  You can see it is addressed to my new email address, but it showed up in my Gmail inbox.

THERE IS A CAVEAT WITH DOMAIN FORWARDING!   If I were to reply to that incoming message from my gmail account, the reply would NOT come from kim@kimsixbloggersupport.com but it would come from my Gmail address.  Remember that that isn’t actually an email account, your mail is still being housed on Gmail.

Using your New Custom Email Address to Send out your Newsletter

Unlike sending emails out of your Gmail inbox, sending out your newsletter does not require Gmail’s server.  (When writing this post I confirmed this with both GoDaddy and MadMimi just to be safe!)  The email itself is coming from your email service but your email address is what is found in the “From” and “Reply To” fields (and when you use domain forwarding, the email is coming from your domain name, not gmail).  Because people can reply to your new custom address you can add it to your newsletter.

In my case I use MadMimi and this is how I set up my new custom domain email on that platform.
I find my outgoing email template and click “send” (since this is where you edit the send information, not the newsletter content itself)


ON the next page, where it lists your options for who to send it to, I click on the “Details” tab.


Now I can replace my Gmail address with my custom domain address.  (As of June everyone will need a custom domain email here or their newsletters will not go out!)


And that is all there is to it.  Save and get ready to send.