Objective
An overview of how to set up link branding with SSL configuration.
Product
Email
Procedure
Link Branding in SendGrid
- First, sign-up into SendGrid and navigate to settings and select sender Authentication
- Scroll down and select link branding and click on create to proceed with link branding for your account
- Select your DNS host name, where you have created your domain. Then click on next as shown below.
- Now update your domain, then select advanced settings to make your link unique. Else, SendGrid will assign a random link to your domain. Then click on next as shown below.
- SendGrid will create CNAME records for Link branding as shown below
- Once you created the CNAME records for the link branding, navigate to your domain registrar and update the CNAME records and save it.
- Navigate back to SendGrid to link branding page and verify it
Setting up CDN(content delivery network)
- Once it is verified, you need to set up Content Delivery Networks as they are a great mechanism that you can use to serve up content very quickly and easily across multiple mediums as well as handle security certificates for you.
- You can use CloudFlare, Fastly, or KeyCDN when using Content Delivery Networks with SendGrid.
- Here as an example, go ahead and create Cloudflare account
- Once created, please enter the website (domain) name in the below-mentioned box
- Once you have added your website(Domain) name, it will ask you to select the plan you want to continue. Here as an example, I have continued for free account which does the job for us.
- Once you click on continue, it will show the DNS records associated with your domain. Click on continue, and it will take you to a different page.
- Here in this page it will generate new NS records, and you have to update these NS records with your domain registrar.
- Once the NS records are updated, you need to navigate back and click on “Done, check nameservers” button.
- Please be mindful that in some cases the time to update the NS would take 48 hours or longer. In some cases, it would be done in 15 to 20 minutes or less.
- Once that it's done, navigate to DNS on the left-hand side.
- Once in the DNS page, scroll down to Email security, as shown below.
- Click on configure to set up SPF and DMARC, DKIM (This is optional, if you have an inbox), (DMARC tells an email receiver how to treat incoming emails from your domain that fail email security checks and DKIM adds a public key to your DNS for email receivers to verify your outgoing signed email)
- Enable SSL by navigating to SSL/TLS as shown below.
- Then navigate to page rules and update rules as shown below.
- Once everything is updated, when you dig your CNAME in the terminal, it should point you to the NS records which you have created. As shown below.
- Then send a test email to see if the links on the email are working and shows secured.
Contact Support once this has been completed for SSL Click-Tracking enablement.