Quicksearch typically sends surveys from the email domain mail.quicksearch.se. This allows us to monitor that the email is delivered, and we use several techniques to improve the chances of the email reaching the recipient.
Quicksearch supports using your own domain for sending from Quicksearch servers. This means you can clearly indicate that your organization is the sender of the surveys, allowing recipients to feel more secure about opening the survey. However, this requires certain technical requirements from you to authorize Quicksearch as the sender of your domain name, ensuring the email gets delivered.
Common receivers, such as Gmail, now block emails from senders sending more than 5000 emails per day unless the sender has set up SPF and DKIM, as described in this article.
We highly recommend using a subdomain for sending via Quicksearch to avoid potential issues if you were to make any changes to your own infrastructure in the future. It also makes it very easy for you to track whether a campaign has been sent from your regular email accounts or from the Quicksearch system.
Examples of such domains could be survey.example.com or feedback.example.com.
When setting up the subdomain for sending, you should make the following settings in your DNS:
A-record:
89.150.196.121
TXT-record:
text = "v=spf1 a ip4:89.150.196.121 include:_spf.quicksearch.se -all"
MX-record:
Use your own MX server first. If it's not available, inform Quicksearch support and specify:
MX 0 mc.sverige.net
DMARC:
We recommend using DMARC. If you already have knowledge of DMARC, you should set it up according to your own preferences and policies.
If you lack knowledge of DMARC and want to get started easily:
Create a subdomain for the subdomain you've chosen (e.g., "@survey.example.com") and name it "_dmarc.survey.example.com". Create a text record on _dmarc.survey.example.com:
text = "v=DMARC1; p=none;"
DKIM:
We recommend using DKIM. If you already have knowledge of DKIM, you can provide a private key to Quicksearch and place the public key in your own DNS for the respective subdomain.
If you're not using a subdomain, you should add the following to your existing SPF record for your domain:
include:_spf.quicksearch.se
It's also possible to use this in combination with using your own email server and DKIM.
Disadvantages and Workarounds
If you're using your own domain for sending emails, any bounces or replies to the email campaigns will go to the mail server you specify in your MX record. This means that the "Inbox" function in Quicksearch, where bounced email messages and replies come in, will cease to function for you as they will no longer go to Quicksearch.
How to Resolve:
If you set up a "Domain forward" for all incoming emails for the subdomain and direct them to "inbox@mail.quicksearch.se", Quicksearch will receive the replies and be able to put them in the inbox. It's important that this is done with a proper "FORWARD" and not through other functions like forwarding or group mailboxes.
Workaround:
If your organization cannot set up a "Domain forward" or proper "FORWARD", you can specify a "Reply-To" during the sending. Respondents will then be able to send the reply to another email address, such as the person responsible for the campaign. So, the replies won't go to the inbox, but you'll receive them at an address of your choice. Note that "Reply-To" is not a mandatory feature in the SMTP standard, and there are email programs that do not support this feature. Therefore, this method is not guaranteed to work in all cases, but it's a solution that often works and in the absence of other options. There are also varying reports online about SPAM filters blocking emails where From and Reply-To are on different domains. Therefore, the Reply-To method should be used if no safer options are available.