Domain alignment: Aligning visible and technical sender domains

The prerequisite for optimising your deliverability on the basis of DMARC is so-called ‘domain alignment’.

With regard to deliverability, there are three relevant domains in Inxmail Commerce:

  1. The domain of the visible sender address (‘FROM address’)

  2. The domain of the technical sender address (‘MAIL-FROM address’, often also referred to as ‘Return Path’ or ‘Bounce address’)

  3. The domain of the tracking links.

Domain alignment: Aligning visible and technical sender addresses

‘Domain alignment’ is when the first two domains are ‘aligned’:

  1. Visible sender address (‘FROM address’)

  2. The domain of the technical sender address (‘MAIL-FROM address’, often also referred to as ‘Return Path’ or ‘Bounce address’)

That is, the visible and technical sender addresses must refer to the same subdomain.
Domain alignment is a basic requirement for working with DMARC and is therefore absolutely necessary for the optimal delivery of your emails.

Explanation: Visible sender address (‘FROM address’)

The domain of the visible sender address can be found to the right of the @ character in the email address in the sender field (‘FROM’).

As the recipient of an email, you can see the visible sender address in the default view in all email clients:

Explanation: Technical sender address (‘Bounce address’, ‘Return Path’, ‘MAIL-FROM address’)

The visible sender address is usually used as the reply address for your mailings. However, this reply address is only used if the mailing successfully reaches its recipient. It may not be possible to reach recipients. Undeliverable mailings are bounced. The receiving mail server then sends a message to a bounce address stored in the mailing stating that the mailing could not be delivered to the recipient. Whenever we speak about the technical sender address, we are referring to this bounce address. It is also known as the ‘Return Path’ or ‘MAIL-FROM address’. The technical sender address is included in each mailing. It is part of the full technical email header.

As the recipient of an email, you cannot see the technical sender address in the default view of your email program. You must deliberately show the full email header. The technical sender address specification in the email header is: ‘Return-Path:’, e.g.

Return-Path: bounce@example.de

Full domain alignment: Aligning mailing links

‘Full domain alignment’ is when all domains are ‘aligned’:

  1. Visible sender address (‘FROM address’)

  2. The domain of the technical sender address (‘MAIL-FROM address’, often also referred to as ‘Return Path’ or ‘Bounce address’)

  3. The domain of the tracking links.

Full domain alignment can only be implemented via a subdomain and cannot be applied to the main domain.

No Full Domain Alignment: Full Domain Alignment, including aligning the mailing links, is usually not used in Inxmail Commerce because only one subdomain for tracking links can be stored per Inxmail Commerce space.