Getting Started with Benchmark Email

Getting Started Updated on April 26, 2021

We know you are eager to get started and send your first campaign, but before sending it is important you set up your account correctly, and understand the key aspects for landing your campaign in the inbox.

Topics covered in this article

• How to add your organization’s information
• How to update your time zone
• How to add different senders
• How to avoid the spam folder
• Contact list verification

How to add your organization’s information

On January 1, 2004, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 went into effect. One of the requirements of this new legislation is that all email communications include the physical address of the sender.

The physical address should be the mailing address for your business, this can include P.O. Boxes.

To update the address in your Benchmark account, see the steps below:

1. First, log in to your Benchmark account.
2. From your dashboard click on your account name on the top right corner.
3. Then select Account Settings. In the Organization Information section make sure the organization name and website domain are also updated.
4. Add in your address where prompted, and save your changes.

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How to update your time zone

By default, Benchmark sets all accounts to the “Greenwich Mean (+0000) Time Zone,” and your campaigns will be scheduled using this timezone. If this isn’t a timezone you want to use, no need to panic, there is an easy way to update this.

To change your time zone settings, follow the steps below:

1. First, log in to your Benchmark account.
2. From your dashboard click on your account name on the top right corner.
3. Then select Account Settings.
4. Scroll down to the Email Message Settings section.
5. Click on the Time Zone dropdown, and select the time zone you would like to use.
6. Last click on Save Changes on the top of the page.

Important

• Not all time zones update when the time changes, you’ll need to update your time zone when clocks change in the summer and winter times.
• The following time zones update automatically when the time changes.
  • US Central
  • US Eastern
  • US Mountain
  • US Pacific
• You can change the time zone used for specific emails to learn how to do this, click here.

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How to add different senders

If you would like to have multiple email addresses to send your email campaigns from, you can. You can have one as the From email address and another as the Reply email address, whatever your case is you will need to verify the email addresses.

Here’s how you add and verify email addresses:

1. Click on your account name and select Account Settings.
2. Select Email Verification from the menu bar on the left-hand side. The page will look like this:
3. On this page, you’ll see the email addresses you’ve already verified and the pending verification emails.
4. Click on the Add Email option.
5. On the Verify Your Email Addresses pop-up, enter the email addresses you would like to verify. If you’re adding multiple email addresses, make sure to hit enter after each email address that you add.
6. When done, click on the Send Verification Email option.
7. Now, go to the inbox of the email address you would like to verify and locate the Confirmation Email and click on the confirmation link.

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How to avoid the Spam folder

There are many reasons why the first campaign can land in the spam folder, but if you are testing a new email marketing software, it can be normal.

Why?

Your domain is new for the software, and the different ISP’s (Hotmail, Yahoo,..) are testing how good you are at sending campaigns. What we mean by good is having a good domain reputation, good quality list, good campaign content… but what happens if you just send one campaign to yourself or to your 3-4 colleagues? You are not giving the ISP’s enough information to know if the campaign needs to land in the inbox or spam, and just as a preventative action, they will put it in the spam folder.

What should you do?

The best way for testing the delivery of the email marketing software is by sending a real campaign to your contact list. If after that you are not happy with the results you can improve the delivery by adding some authentication to your domain.

FREE ACCOUNT

SPF record: v=spf1 a mx include:bmsend.com ~all

CNAME records:

bmdeda._domainkey should point to bmdeda._domainkey.bmsend.com

PREMIUM ACCOUNT

Domain Whitelabeling:

1st CNAME:

rCLIENTID.CLIENTDOMAIN.com should point to rCLIENTID.benchclient.com

2nd CNAME:

bmdeda._domainkey.CLIENTDOMAIN.com should point to dkim.CLIENTID.benchclient.com

CLIENTID is your unique ID within Benchmark Email. Ex. 1234567.

CLIENTDOMAIN is your sending domain. Ex. yourdomain.com

To get your ClientID, follow the steps below.

1. Log in to your Benchmark account, and click on your account name.
2. Click on the Partner Program option.
3. Copy the Partner ID (this is the same as your Client ID).

Once the CNAME records are updated, the whitelabeling flag needs to be activated from our backend.

To activate the whitelabeling flag:

1. Contact our support team via email, and inform them that you’ve updated your CNAME records. Be sure to share both of the records in the email.
2. When the whitelabeling flag is activated, our support team will notify you via email.

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Contact List Verification

The number one thing all email marketers should know is that a clean and up to date list is crucial to obtain optimal sending results. Before you begin sending emails from our service or any for that matter, you should verify your contact list. Verifying your contact list will help you weed out all of the invalid emails that could hurt your sending reputation.

With Benchmark this can be fast and easy, our list verification service costs $3 per 1,000 emails. To learn more about verifying your contact list, please click here. 

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If you have any questions regarding setting up your account please feel free to contact our support team via Email, LiveChat or by phone.

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