7. Sender & domains — who your email comes from

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Contents

1. Why this matters more than the design
2. From Name and From Address
3. The sender chip, decoded
4. Sending from your own domain — the setup
5. The DNS records, explained for the person who owns your website
6. Checking verification
7. If verification fails
8. Primary domain, and multiple domains
9. Deliverability — staying out of spam

Why this matters more than the design

Guests decide whether to open an email based on two things: the sender name and the subject line. Nothing inside the email gets a vote until those two have done their job.

And mail providers decide whether to deliver it based largely on whether your domain has proven it authorised the message. NX gives you two ways to send:

You can start on the shared sender and switch later. Nothing about your campaigns, lists or templates changes when you do.

From Name and From Address

Both live in Campaign Settings (or Quick Send's Settings), and both are per-campaign — so you can send guest promos as the restaurant and catering replies as a person.

From Name — what appears in the inbox.

• Use your restaurant's name. Guests scan for the brand they recognise.
• A person's name works when the email genuinely is from them: Maria at Tony's Trattoria.
• Keep it under about 25 characters; phones truncate.
• Keep it consistent. Changing it every campaign makes you unrecognisable.

From Address — the address the email claims to be from.

• hello@, eat@, or your restaurant's real inbox. Something a guest could plausibly reply to.
• Avoid noreply@. Replies to a marketing email are the best thing that can happen; don't throw them away.
• Make sure someone reads it. Guests reply to restaurant email — with reservations, questions and complaints.

The sender chip, decoded

Under the From Address field, a chip appears as you type:

✅ "Sends natively from your verified domain" The domain is verified for this venue/Enterprise. Recipients see exactly the address you typed. Best case — nothing to do.

ℹ️ "Routes through NX shared sender" The domain isn't verified for you, so NX sends the message from its own verified domain instead:

• Recipients see <Your From Name> via NX <noreply@joinnx.com>
• Reply-To is set to your address, so replies still reach you
• The footer says "Sent by Your Name via NX"

Nothing is broken — the mail is delivered and replies work. But "via NX" is less recognisable in an inbox, and using your own authenticated domain typically improves both open rate and inbox placement.

⚠️ "Enter a valid email address" Just a typo check — it needs a proper name@domain.tld.

Sending from your own domain — the setup

You'll need someone with access to your domain's DNS (whoever set up your website — often your web designer, or your own account at GoDaddy / Cloudflare / Squarespace / Google Domains).

Domains only appears with your Enterprise selected. Verify there.

Step 1 — Register the domain in NX

1. Marketing → Domains → Register Domain.

2. Enter a subdomain dedicated to email: mail.tonystrattoria.com.

   Use a subdomain, not your bare tonystrattoria.com. If marketing email ever damages your sending reputation, a subdomain contains the damage instead of affecting the email your staff send from the main domain.

3. Turn on Set as primary sending domain if this is your main one.
4. Register.

The domain is created with status PENDING and NX generates the DNS records you need.

Step 2 — Add four DNS records

Click the row (👁 View / DKIM Records) to open the details panel. You'll see four records, each with a copy button:

Send them to whoever manages your DNS, or add them yourself. Copy/paste exactly — one wrong character and verification never completes.

The Name field: NX shows names with your domain trimmed off the end, because most DNS providers add your domain automatically. If your provider wants the full name, add .mail.yourdomain.com back on. If you're unsure, add it one way, wait, and re-verify; a wrong name doesn't break anything, it just doesn't verify.

Step 3 — Wait, then verify

DNS changes take between a few minutes and 72 hours to spread. Come back later and press Re-verify in the details panel (or the ↻ button on the row).

When both the ownership record and all three DKIM records are found, the status flips to VERIFIED and a verified date appears.

Step 4 — Use it

Set your campaigns' From Address to an address on that domain — hello@mail.tonystrattoria.com — and the chip should now read "Sends natively from your verified domain".

Existing campaigns aren't updated automatically; edit the From Address on each, or set it on the next one you build.

The DNS records, explained for the person who owns your website

Hand this section over if someone else manages your DNS.

• 1 × TXT record on _amazonses.<domain> — a one-time ownership proof.
• 3 × CNAME records on <token>._domainkey.<domain>, each pointing at <token>.dkim.amazonses.com — these are DKIM keys. They let receiving mail servers confirm the message was authorised by this domain and wasn't altered in transit.

All four are additive and safe: they don't affect existing mail, web traffic, or any other record. Nothing needs to be removed. DKIM CNAMEs must stay in place permanently — deleting them later breaks sending.

The domain being verified is used only for outbound marketing email from NX.

Checking verification

The Domains table shows:

Row buttons: 👁 view records, ↻ re-check, 🗑 delete.

PENDING is normal for the first day. It means NX hasn't yet found all four records. Re-verify checks again on demand; it's safe to press as often as you like.

If verification fails

Work through these in order:

1. Has enough time passed? Give it a few hours before assuming anything is wrong. 72 hours is the outer limit.
2. Copy/paste again from the panel. The most common failure is a truncated CNAME value or a trailing space.
3. Check the Name field convention. Most providers auto-append your domain — so entering the full abc123._domainkey.mail.yourdomain.com produces abc123._domainkey.mail.yourdomain.com.mail.yourdomain.com, which never verifies. Try it the other way.
4. All three CNAMEs, not one. All three DKIM records must be present.
5. CNAME, not A or TXT for records 2–4. Some DNS UIs default to the wrong type.
6. Cloudflare users: DKIM CNAMEs must be DNS only (grey cloud), not proxied (orange).
7. Check for a conflicting record with the same name from a previous email provider.

If all four records are definitely in place and it still won't verify after 72 hours, contact NX support with the domain name.

Deleting a domain is restricted, because the verification is shared infrastructure. If a delete is refused, that's why — contact support rather than retrying.

Primary domain, and multiple domains

• Primary marks your main sending domain. It's a label for your own clarity; what actually decides how a campaign sends is the From Address on that campaign.
• You can verify more than one domain — e.g. a brand domain per concept in a multi-concept group.
• A campaign's From Address just needs to be on some domain verified for that venue/Enterprise. Both venue-level and Enterprise-level verified domains are accepted.
• Addresses on NX's own domains (joinnx.com, nxorders.com) always send natively without any verification.

Deliverability — staying out of spam

Verification is the biggest single lever. After that, in order of impact:

1. Only email people who know you. Purchased lists and scraped addresses generate complaints, and complaints are the fastest way into the spam folder for everyone on your list. Everything in §3 targets people who have actually eaten at your restaurant.

2. Let suppression do its job. NX removes bounced and unsubscribed addresses automatically. Don't work around it by re-adding contacts or resubscribing without consent (§8).

3. Warm up gradually. On a newly verified domain, don't send 5,000 emails on day one. Start with a few hundred of your most engaged guests (Active — last 90 days), then grow over two or three weeks.

4. Send consistently, not sporadically. Two emails a month, every month, builds a better sending reputation than eleven in December and nothing else.

5. Watch bounce and complaint rates. Under 2% bounces and under 0.1% complaints is healthy. Above that, stop and clean your list before the next send.

6. Write like a person. ALL CAPS SUBJECTS, !!!, "FREE!!!", giant red text and image-only emails all score badly with filters.

7. Prune the never-engaged. Guests who haven't opened anything in a year drag your reputation down. Send them one final "still want to hear from us?" email, then stop mailing them.

Next: §8 Unsubscribes & the law