When I was learning Marketing Cloud Engagement (MCE), one of the things that always caught me out was thinking about exactly what a Sender Authentication Package (SAP) was – the components that a SAP was made up of and the role of each component.
I come from an Account Engagement (AE) background, so to try to get a better grasp on the subject matter, I started to liken some of the features to features within AE
Since then, I’ve seen other companies making the switch from AE to MCE so I thought why not write down what I’ve learned in case it can help fellow AE to MCE peers.
There may be some subtle differences and of course, it won’t ever be exactly like for like but this is how I like to think of SAP. I hope you find it useful.
What is a SAP?
Think of a SAP as your official email address “stamp of approval.”
It’s a collection of settings that verify your identity as a legitimate sender, so recipient inboxes don’t see your emails as spammy.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are always looking out for spammy emails to try and protect us from attacks, such as phishing. This is achieved through various authentication methods and it’s up to us and a proper, correct installation of the components in a SAP, to ensure we are a trustworthy sender of emails.
What are the components of a SAP and how does this compare with AE?
Within AE, you have an IP Address (usually shared), a Tracker Domain for assets and a sender domain.
Whilst there may be some differences, the way I think about the SAP components is like this.
A SAP is made up of…
A Dedicated IP Address
This is a unique IP address assigned specifically to your sending domain. It isolates your email traffic from other senders, preventing your reputation from being affected by the sending practices of others. Think of it as having your own dedicated lane on a motorway (wouldn’t that be nice!)
Within AE, you can procure your own dedicated sending domain through Sales, should you wish to. However, the advice is that for a company sending more than 100k+ emails a month, who wants to look after their reputation etc, a dedicated IP address may not be needed, which means you are using a shared IP with other AE customers.
Both systems use an IP Address for sending emails, a dedicated one comes with a SAP in MCE.
Sender Domain Authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC)
These are technical configurations that verify your email’s origin and makes sure the email hasn’t been tampered with. Essentially, it ensures that MCE is a trusted sender on behalf of your company’s email domain.
Exactly the same as AE. One of the first tasks when setting either system up is to ensure SPF, DIM and DMARC policies are in place.
Reply Mail Management (RMM)
This feature handles automatic replies, such as out-of-office messages, and manages unsubscribe requests. It keeps your inbox clean and ensures compliance with regulations like CAN-SPAM and GDPR.
You can set terms to be accepted for unsubscribes and opt outs too, so if someone replies with ‘unsubscribe’, this will be acknowledged. After the rules have been run, you can set an inbox for every other email that doesn’t meet the criteria to be forwarded on.
This is a really cool feature that has more to it than AE does but this is comparative to setting the email inbox for replies to go to when sending the email. The key difference is, AE doesn’t have any rules for handling different types of responses.
Private Domains
This covers both the email sending domain (ie. @artofcloud.co.uk) and the branding for your links in emails and other assets, such as Cloud Page assets.
Whilst email sending domains are nothing new to AE users, the link wrapping portion and branding side of things is akin to the Tracker Domain setup within AE.
SAPs are a key component of setting up MCE.
For any AE users trying to get their head around the switch, I hope this way of seeing things helps. Feel free to reach out to us should you need help in setting up your MCE org.
