A DMARC check includes SPF and DKIM alignment. If your DMARC report says that SPF or DKIM alignment has failed for your emails even though you've properly authenticated your domain with Zoho Marketing Automation, read the information below to learn why this may have happened and how to resolve it. 

When an email is sent, its sender ID is validated and then its SPF and DKIM records are aligned. Complying with DMARC policy tells the recipient systems that the email sender has done something that only an authentic sender can do: align the DKIM and/or SPF domain with the “From” domain that the recipient sees. 

If you're sending emails through your business domain as "From", DMARC will compare it with the "Envelope From" (also known as "Return-Path") domain. If both the domains or their subdomains match, SPF is aligned. 

If you're using an email marketing service to send emails, the "Envelope From" domain is the domain of the marketing service. It is the domain used to receive bounce error messages from recipient systems. In your case, Zoho Marketing Automation uses "zcsend.net" as the "Envelope From" domain to collect the bounce error messages so we can display the bounce rate and reasons in your campaign report. During the DMARC check, this "Envelope From" domain will not match with the actual sender's business domain, so SPF alignment will fail. This happens not only with Zoho Marketing Automation but with any email marketing service. 

DMARC requires either SPF or DKIM alignment. So, if you have DKIM authentication, you will pass the DMARC check even without SPF alignment. SPF alignment failing won't affect your email deliverability.

If you don't have DKIM authentication, both SPF and DKIM alignment will fail, and your email won't pass the DMARC check. So, we recommend that you authenticate your domain with both SPF and DKIM to pass DMARC and improve your email deliverability.

SPF  DMARC  DKIM