From Email using your own domain

When you start with Activity Messenger, the From email is info@activitymessenger.com. Your recipients receive an email from that address. When a recipient replies to a message you sent, it will go to the Reply to email address you configured. It should be something like xxxx@yourdomain.com.

If you wish to use your own From email address, you must verify ownership of your domain and email addresses. Go to the From Email settings page and follow the instructions.

# Understanding From Email and Reply To Email

When a recipient receives an email, they see the name of your organization. This is true in all cases: whether the email came from info@activitymessenger.com or xxxx@yourdomain.com. In Gmail for example, the recipient would see this:

When the recipient opens the email, they can click to view details of the sender and recipient. The from determines who sent the email. By default it is Activity Messenger (left). When you configure to send with your own domain name, it will be yours (right).

When the recipient replies to your email, it will go to the Reply to email address. In some rare situations, the recipient may copy/paste the From email address to send you a message. If you haven't configure the From email, it will go to info@activitymessenger.com and you will never get the message.

For this reason we recommend you configure From Emails to use your own domain name. It will allow you to fully white-label emails you send.

Activity Messenger uses Amazon Web Services or AWS to send emails. AWS encrypts messages and ensures delivery.

# Verify domain

Verification requires you to publish DKIM records on your domain DNS. Type in your domain and click on Verify. DNS records will appear in a table.

Click on the Download button to get a copy of the DNS records in a CSV file. Contact your website or email administrator for them to add the DNS records to your domain. Once the DNS records are created, come back to this page to refresh the status.

Once your domain is verified, you can move on to verifying individual email addresses.

# Adding DNS records to your domain

Follow these 3 steps to add these records to your domain.

1. Determine the hosting provider of your website. If you don't know off hand, you can use a service like www.whoishostingthis.com.
2. Find instructions on how to add DNS records with your hosting provider. Here is a list of common hosting providers. If you don't find yours, you can google "How to add DNS records for ...".
   • Google Domains
   • GoDaddy
   • Namecheap
3. Follow the instructions to add the 4 DNS records: 1 TXT record for your domain, and 3 CNAME records for the DKIM. This process will take a few hours. We will reach out to you when the process is complete or if it fails.

# Domain verification failure

Amazon Web Services will try to detect DNS records for 3 days. If you have not added the DNS settings to your domain within those 3 days, AWS will stop verification. You will receive an email with subject "Email domain/DKIM failure for yourdomain.com".

If you have added the DNS records and still receive this message, the records may not have been entered properly. Some DNS admin consoles may require that you append your domain to the Name value. When specifying the DNS records, you can try again by appending your domain to the Name value.

Make sure the domain name you entered in Activity Messenger does not contain "www." or other sub-domains. It must be the root domain name.

To try again, click on Remove and type in your domain name again. This will restart the process.

# Verify email addresses

Every From email you use must be verified. That process is done by sending a confirmation email to verify ownership.

Type in your email and click Verify. You will receive an email to that address. Click on that link to confirm ownership. Refresh this page. The email address should be marked as Verified.

Activity Messenger uses Amazon Web Services or AWS to send emails. Verification emails will come from Amazon Web Services and not Activity Messenger.

# Using From email in messages

Once you have gone through these steps, the From emails will be available to use when you send messages. A dropdown will allow you to change it.

The Reply to email will be set to the From email you have chosen. Alternatively, if you wish to personally receive replies, you can set it to your own email address.