Channels and sender identities

Before you grow a list, decide how you organize it. Broadcast gives you two tools: channels, which separate audiences, and sender identities, which separate From addresses. In this lesson you learn which one to reach for, and how to set up a second From address that your provider accepts.

A channel is a list

A channel is what other tools call a list. Each channel is isolated. It has its own subscribers and their data, its own email servers, its own broadcasts, sequences and templates, its own forms and suppression list, and its own reports. Nothing in one channel can reach another.

Create a new channel when you have a different audience. Two newsletters with different readers, two brands, or B2B and B2C customers are good reasons. To create one, click the switch channel icon next to the current channel name in the sidebar, then New Channel. A short wizard asks for a name, the sender details and an email server.

Every dashboard page has the channel in its address, such as /c/acme-newsletter/broadcasts. Each browser tab keeps its own channel, so you can work in two channels side by side. Before you create a broadcast, check the channel name in the sidebar. A broadcast can only go to subscribers in its own channel.

Do not create a channel to split one audience by interest. A reader who wants your weekly news but not your webinar invites is one person. Topics handle that inside one channel, and lesson 4 covers them. The multiple newsletters guide walks through the choice.

Sender details

Each channel has sender details: the From name, the From email, a physical address and the email footer. You set them under Channel Settings → Sender Details. The footer goes on every broadcast and sequence email and includes an unsubscribe link by default.

A sender identity is a From address

Sometimes one audience gets different kinds of mail. A shop sends receipts and newsletters to the same customers. You want them on one list, but from different addresses.

Sender identities solve this. One channel holds several From addresses, and each broadcast, sequence or transactional email picks one. The first identity comes from the channel’s sender details and is the default. Anything that does not pick an identity sends from it.

The classic setup puts each kind of mail on its own subdomain:

• billing@send.example.com for receipts and password resets.
• news@news.example.com for newsletters.

Each subdomain builds its own reputation. A newsletter that draws complaints cannot drag down the invoices that must arrive.

Add an identity

1. Open Channel Settings → Sender Details → Identities.
2. Under Add a sender identity, enter a From name and a From email.
3. Click Add identity. It is not the default, so nothing that already sends changes.
4. At your email provider, verify the new domain with DKIM and SPF, or verify the single address.
5. Back in Broadcast, click Check verification now. The identity shows one line per email server, such as Postmark: verified via domain.
6. In a draft broadcast, open the Settings tab and choose the identity under Send As.

Sequences have the same Send As choice in their settings. Transactional email takes a sender_identity_id in the API call. The Send As menus appear only once the channel has more than one identity.

Why verification fails

Providers deliver mail only from addresses or domains they verified, so Broadcast tracks each identity per email server. The most common failures:

• Provider says not verified. Broadcast counts a domain as verified only when the provider reports both DKIM and SPF as verified. DKIM done and SPF pending does not count. Finish the records, then check again.
• A public mailbox domain. Nobody can publish DNS for gmail.com or outlook.com, so domain verification is impossible there. Use an address on a domain you control.
• Mailgun pinned to another domain. A Mailgun email server is pinned to one sending domain. An identity on a different domain never sends through it, and Broadcast leaves that server out. Add a Mailgun server for the new domain.
• Can’t check: connect API. The server has SMTP credentials only. Broadcast checks verification through the provider’s API, so add the API credentials.

You cannot delete the default identity. Make another one the default first. Deleting any other identity moves anything that used it back to the default. See Sender identities.

What you learned

• A channel is an isolated list. Create one for a different audience.
• A sender identity is an extra From address on the same list.
• Put different kinds of mail on different subdomains, so each builds its own reputation.
• An identity sends only after the provider verifies its domain (DKIM and SPF) or its address.