Email Deliverability

At Neon One we take email deliverability very seriously, as this is one of the primary ways organizations and fundraisers communicate with their networks. To this end, Neon Fundraise has implemented the following measures, which will help promote deliverability, protect against spam and spoofing, thereby continuing to improve our excellent spam score.

Here is a summary of email domain requirements and contingencies:

1. All email addresses to be used in the "From" field in Neon Fundraise emails will need to be verified as having valid SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records (see below for more information on what these are).
2. If an email address that is meant to be used in the "From" field is not verified—
   1. The listed "From" email address will NOT be used, and instead the "From" address will fall back to using Neon Fundraise's internal verified domain, "[your-organization]@mail-server5.com". 
   2. The listed "From" email address will instead be used in the "Reply-to" field, so that if the user replies to the email, it will be sent to the correct destination.
3. All the above applies to emails sent from both the Admin or the fundraiser dashboard.

How to Verify Email Domains

If a domain listed in the ""From" Email Address" field, under Email > Advanced, is unverified, a notice will appear at the top of the page to indicate this. The above contingencies will apply to any unverified domain.

To verify your email domains, navigate to Organization > Email Domains. On that page, all the domains listed throughout the organization will be listed, along with their verification status. Domains can be added by clicking the plus button.

If a domain is unverified (or "Pending"), clicking on that domain will present instructions for verifying the domain, which involves modifying the DNS records within your domain host.

Please Note: Neon Fundraise does not manage your domain name hosting and we are only able to provide limited assistance with this setup process, since we are not familiar with every domain name service on the market. Please consult your Domain Name Provider's Customer Support resources for instructions on configuring your SPF, DKIM, or DMARC setup.

Please note: When modifying your DNS settings, do not remove any DNS settings that are currently in place. The DNS records Neon Fundraise provides for verifying email domains should be added in addition to existing DNS records.

This is especially important for clients with white labeled websites.

• Clients with whitelisted domains be sure to keep in place:
  • A-Record for apex/root (often a "*" or "@" sign) pointing to "52.179.120.246"
  • CNAME for "www" pointing to "clients-13.rallybound.com"
• Clients with whitelisted subdomains should be sure to keep in place:
  • CNAME for "[subdomain]" pointing to "clients-13.rallybound.com"

Domains can also be deleted from the organization in this interface, by clicking a domain and clicking "Remove Domain" in the ensuing popup.

Fundraiser Emails

Note that these verification requirements apply to fundraiser emails as well, so if a fundraiser’s email is not on a verified domain or if the fundraiser has a Gmail or Yahoo email address, the system will use the fallback email address as outlined above and their email address will be populated as the Reply-To email address. We anticipate that this will result in the majority of fundraiser emails to use the fallback email address, and not the fundraiser’s own address. Please keep in mind that these requirements are from the above email providers themselves and there is nothing Neon Fundraise can do to subvert them.

General Information

What is an SPF record?

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication method used to indicate to your recipients’ email service provider that Neon CRM is authorized to send emails from your organization’s domain. In combination with security policies set by your recipients’ service providers, SPF protects against email spoofing where an unauthorized email is sent with your organization’s domain as the sender. However, strict SPF policies on recipients’ servers can also result in bounced emails when sending email campaigns from Neon CRM if your organization has not configured an SPF record for your domain.

An SPF record is an entry in your organization’s Domain Name System (DNS) configuration that lists an email server host, such as Neon CRM, as an authorized sender of emails from your organization’s domain.

What is DKIM?

DomainKeys Identification Mail (DKIM) is an email authentication method used to prevent spoofing of outgoing messages sent from your organization’s domain. Receiving servers use DKIM to verify that the domain owner actually sent the message.

What is DMARC?

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) lets you tell receiving servers what to do with messages from your domain that don’t pass SPF or DKIM. It builds on SPF and DKIM (so both are required before DMARC setup) and completes the email authentication process.