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Guides

Everything you need to go from a new account to a delivered campaign. Still stuck? Contact support.

1. Getting started

When you sign up we email you a verification link before you set a password. That order is deliberate: it proves you control the address first, so a password reset always has somewhere safe to go.

New accounts start in sandbox mode. In sandbox you have the full product, but sends only reach people on your own team. This is not a trial limitation, it is how we keep the platform clean for everyone. To reach real recipients you complete three checks:

  • Verify your email. Done at signup.
  • Verify your phone. A one-time code by SMS.
  • Verify your sending domain. DNS records that prove you own the domain you send from. See the next guide.

Once all three are green, production sending unlocks automatically. You can watch your progress on the account screen, which shows which steps are complete and which are outstanding.

Adding your team. Invite teammates from your account settings. They receive an invite link and set their own password, so you never handle a colleague's credentials. How many seats you get depends on your plan, and the plan comparison on the pricing page lists the limits.

2. Verify your sending domain

This is the step that unlocks production sending, and it is the one that most affects whether your mail lands in the inbox. You are proving to us, and to every mailbox provider, that you are allowed to send as your domain.

Add your sending domain in the app, and we generate the exact DNS records for it. There are three:

  • SPF authorizes our infrastructure to send for your domain.
  • DKIM cryptographically signs your mail. We generate a unique key per domain, so your signature is yours alone.
  • DMARC tells receivers what to do with mail that fails the checks above. It is optional to start, but strongly recommended.

Copy each record into your DNS provider, then press Check DNS in the app. We look them up live and mark the domain verified when they resolve correctly. DNS changes can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to propagate, so if the check fails immediately after you add the records, wait and try again.

If you already send from this domain with another provider, do not replace your existing SPF record. A domain must have exactly one SPF record, and publishing a second one breaks authentication for every sender on that domain. Merge our value into the record you already have.

3. Import your contacts

Contacts live in data extensions, which are simply the tables that hold your audience. You can have as many as you like: one per list, per segment, per product line, however you think about your audience.

  1. Create a data extension and define its fields. At minimum you need an email address field.
  2. Upload a CSV and map its columns onto those fields.
  3. Review the import summary. Rows that failed validation are reported rather than silently dropped, so you always know what actually landed.

You can also send contacts in programmatically through our events API if you would rather keep the platform in sync with your own system.

Only import people who asked to hear from you. Purchased, rented, scraped, and harvested lists are prohibited, and they are also the fastest way to destroy your own sending reputation. If you cannot say where an address came from and that they opted in, do not upload it.

4. Send your first email

SentientMail separates templates from emails. A template is the reusable shell: your header, footer, brand styling, and named slots. An email fills those slots with content. Build the template once and every email after it stays on-brand automatically.

  1. Set up a sender profile. This is your From identity: name, address, and reply-to. A send will not launch without one, so do this first.
  2. Build your email on a template, or start from scratch if you prefer.
  3. Preview and test. Send a test to yourself and read it on a phone as well as a desktop. Check that your unsubscribe link works.
  4. Choose your audience from a data extension or a segment.
  5. Launch. Track opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes as results come in.
Every commercial message needs a working unsubscribe link and a valid postal address. We include both by default. Do not remove them: they are legal requirements in most jurisdictions, not styling choices.

5. Staying deliverable

Mailbox providers decide where your mail lands based on how recipients react to it. Two numbers matter more than any other, and we watch both on your behalf.

3% Hard bounce rate Addresses that do not exist. A high rate signals a stale or purchased list.
0.1% Spam complaint rate Recipients marking you as spam. One in a thousand is already a warning sign.

If an account crosses either threshold over a rolling seven-day window, we automatically pause its external sending and email the account owner. This protects you as much as it protects everyone else: sending more mail from a domain that is already generating complaints damages your reputation in ways that take months to repair.

Keeping both numbers low comes down to a few habits:

  • Only mail people who opted in, and mail them while they still remember doing it.
  • Remove addresses that hard bounce. We suppress them automatically, but a list that produces many of them needs cleaning at the source.
  • Make unsubscribing easy. An unsubscribe is a far better outcome than a spam complaint.
  • Send consistently rather than in rare large bursts, and warm up gradually when you are new or changing domains.

If your sending has been paused and you have addressed the cause, write to support@sentientmail.com and we will review it with you.

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Real answers from the people who built it.

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