Sender Identities

A channel normally sends everything from a single From address: its default sender. Sender identities let one channel hold multiple From addresses, each selectable per broadcast, sequence, and transactional email, without splitting your subscriber list.

The classic use case is separating mail types by subdomain:

  • billing@send.yourdomain.com for transactional email (receipts, password resets)
  • news@news.yourdomain.com for newsletters and campaigns

A complaint-prone campaign can then never drag down the deliverability of the invoices that must always arrive: each subdomain builds its own sending reputation.

Manage identities under Settings → Sender Details → Identities. The first identity is created automatically from your channel’s sender details, and stays the default: anything that doesn’t explicitly pick an identity sends as the default.

Example: add a newsletter address and send from it

This example starts from a channel whose default identity is hello@yourdomain.com. It adds news@news.yourdomain.com for newsletters and sends one broadcast from it.

  1. Open Settings → Sender Details → Identities.
  2. Under Add a sender identity, set From name to Acme Newsletter and From email to news@news.yourdomain.com.
  3. Click Add identity. Broadcast confirms with Sender identity news@news.yourdomain.com added. The new identity is not the default, so nothing that already sends changes.
  4. Broadcast now checks the new address against each active email server that has API access. Until that check finishes, the identity reads Not yet checked against any email server.
  5. At your email provider, verify the domain news.yourdomain.com (DKIM and SPF), or verify the single address. The provider’s own setup pages, or the setup wizard under Email Servers, add the records.
  6. Click Check verification now. The dialog asks each server in turn. When it finishes, the identity shows one line per server, for example Postmark: verified via domain, where the first word is your email server’s name.
  7. Open a draft broadcast and go to the Settings tab. Under Send As, choose Acme Newsletter <news@news.yourdomain.com>. If you leave the select on Channel default (hello@yourdomain.com), the broadcast sends from the default identity.

Sequences pick an identity the same way, from the Send As section of the sequence’s settings.

Picking an identity per send

  • Broadcasts: the Send As dropdown on the composer’s Settings tab.
  • Sequences: the Send As section in the sequence’s settings.
  • Transactional email: the sender_identity_id parameter on the Transactional Email API.

The dropdowns only appear once a channel has more than one identity.

Verification

Providers only deliver mail from addresses (or domains) they have verified, so every identity is tracked per email server:

  • Verified: the provider confirmed this identity may send, either because its whole domain passes DKIM/SPF (via domain, which covers any future identity on the same domain) or because the address is individually verified (via sender, which covers that address only).
  • Provider says not verified: Broadcast asked and the provider said no. Complete the verification at the provider or re-run the setup wizard.
  • Not checked yet: no check has run for this pairing. This is neutral, not a problem.
  • Last check failed: the provider API could not be reached; the badge keeps showing the last known state.

Checks run automatically when an identity is added or its address changes, on a recurring schedule, and on demand via Check verification now, which walks every server and reports each one:

  • Servers with API access are checked live.
  • Servers whose API credentials are missing show connect API: verification can only be checked through the provider’s API, not through SMTP sending credentials.
  • Servers with no verification API at all (plain SMTP relays) are listed as such; verify those addresses directly with your provider.

Note

Mailgun pins one sending domain per email server, so an identity on a different domain can never verify or send through that server. Broadcast excludes such servers from sending automatically and notes the pinned domain in the check dialog.

Deleting an identity reverts anything pinned to it back to the channel default. The default identity itself cannot be deleted: promote another identity first.

Why verification fails

Each line below is what the identity, or the warning banner above it, shows for one email server.

provider says not verified. The banner reads, for example, Postmark reports news@news.yourdomain.com as not verified. Broadcast counts a domain as verified only when the provider reports both DKIM and SPF as verified for it. A domain with DKIM done and SPF still pending does not count. Broadcast then asks about the single address, and the provider does not list it as a verified sender either. Finish the DNS records or the sender verification at the provider, then click Check verification now. On Mailgun, only the domain counts: Broadcast checks the address by its domain.

The address is on a public mailbox domain. Nobody can publish DNS records for gmail.com, outlook.com, icloud.com and similar domains, so domain verification is impossible for an identity on them. Only individual sender verification at the provider can work. Broadcast checks Mailgun servers by domain only, so such an identity never verifies on Mailgun. Use an address on a domain you control.

configured domain is mg.yourdomain.com but news@news.yourdomain.com uses news.yourdomain.com. A Mailgun email server is pinned to one sending domain. An identity on any other domain can never verify there, and Broadcast leaves that server out of every send from that identity. Add a Mailgun server for the identity’s domain, or use an identity on the pinned domain.

Not yet checked against any email server after an edit. Changing an identity’s email address deletes its verification results, because the provider sees a new address. The automatic check runs again. Click Check verification now if you do not want to wait.

last check failed. Broadcast could not get an answer from the provider’s API, for example because an API key was revoked. The identity keeps its last known state. Fix the credentials on the email server, then check again.

Can't check: connect API. The email server has sending credentials but no API access. Broadcast checks verification through the provider’s API (the Postmark account token, AWS SES credentials, the SendGrid API key or the Mailgun API key). Add the API credentials to the email server.

No verification API for this server type. The email server is a plain SMTP relay. Broadcast cannot check it. Verify the address directly with that provider.

Errors when you add or edit an identity

  • Name can't be blank: fill in From name.
  • Email is invalid: the From email is not a valid address.
  • Email has already been taken: the channel already has an identity with this address. Addresses are compared without regard to case.
  • The default sender identity cannot be deleted. Make another identity the default first.: click Make default on another identity, then remove this one.

Last updated

Was this page helpful?

Thanks for your feedback!

Thanks for letting us know. We'll work on improving this page.