Adding SendGrid SFP and DKIM question

Technical Help
1

I use a payment automation service that sends out emails to my customers about updating payment methods on file if they are expired or when I first set a customer up in this system they’ll get a welcome email. This payment service uses SendGrid as the ESP it seems. I reached out to my vendor to see if I can add SFP/DKIM records to improve alignment for this Source. They responded and said they do offer DKIM and wanted to know which domain I would like them to generate the records for. I gave them my domain and also asked about SPF and they responded that they do offer SPF as well. They then responded back with 3 records.

The first is a MX Record which has a host that is em444.mydomain and a Value of mx.sendgrid.net.

The second is a TXT Record which has a host that is em444.mydomain and a Value of v=spf1 ip4:198.37.152.99 -all so that’s my SPF record

The third is a TXT Record which has a host that is m7._domainkey.mydomin.com and has a Value of k=rsa; t=s; p=xxxxxxxxxxxxxx which is the DKIM record

What is that first MX record for? Also, in the DKIM record shouldn’t it start with v=DKIM1;

I’m kind of new to this SPF/DKIM/DMARC thing so forgive me if my question is not asked correctly, I’m happy to elaborate on anything if it helps. Thanks in advance!

2

That record is to insure that replies to return-path are handled by SendGrid.

Yes. You can simply prepend that to rest of the data.

There is no need to obfuscate the public key in your DKIM record.

3

Thank you LinkP for the reply, especially the direction on the MX record and the return-path. This is still kind of new to me but I’m understanding now that the return-path is used for bounced emails. It seems creating a CNAME record is the way to go for this.

I assumed the tech who sent me the info for the DKIM records just let off the v=DKIM1; so thanks for confirming for me.