One of the features of sheepCRM is the ability to send out branded emails using your logo, colours and content. As a part of this branding process, we'll send out these emails using your chosen domain.

In order to use your domain, we'll need your help to approve, or verify, your domain for use with Sparkpost. Without this verification, we can't send out emails using your domain as they will likely be flagged as spam by your member's email clients.

You'll be sent an email by a member of our team with a TXT record that we'll ask you to add to your domain's DNS settings. This record will consist of two parts:

This can also be called Name in your DNS provider and will generally look like this:

For some DNS providers, you will be unable to include your domain in the Hostname, so you will instead need to enter the following:

If you add the full Hostname and notice that the saved record has repeated your domain, you'll want to use the shortened version instead. If you are in doubt of which to choose, you can use a service like MXToolbox to check the results. For more information on checking the added record, please read the Troubleshooting section in this article.

This can also be called Content in your DNS provider and will be a long string which will generally look like this:

You can copy the full line provided in the email to you and paste it into your new TXT record, making sure to include all the characters and no white spaces on the end.

In your DNS provider, you'll want to make sure that you have selected the TXT option from a list, if provided, or using the matching fields if not. With the Hostname and Value added you can add or save your new TXT record.

Unfortunately, there are numerous different DNS providers, each having unique methods for managing DNS records so we can't go into a step-by-step process for adding a new record. However here are some links to articles on managing DNS records with common DNS providers:

Once added, you can check whether the record has been successfully created by using a third-party tool such as MXToolBox. Using this tool, you can enter the full Hostname into the search box and check if the Value is found and matches the data in the email send to you.

If the record can't be found, there could be a number of reasons as to why this is the case. We'll outline the most frequent issues:

While the change is usually instant with most DNS providers, new records can take up to 24 hours to be propagated and appear. If the record can't be found when you check, try waiting a few hours and trying again.

While the DNS for your domain is generally handled in your domain registrar, you may find that you have a third-party managing your DNS, or multiple places where you have DNS records.

If you add your new record and find that it hasn't appeared after a few hours, there's a good chance that the DNS records are being managed somewhere else. To find out which records your domain is looking at, you can use MXToolBox again and look just below the results:

In this example, the registrar is 123reg, but the domain is being managed by Cloudflare, so any changes made in 123reg will not be read and will not be used.