TOPIC:

I setup a new Mailchimp account for our club (so we can send automated emails to guests and members).

However, in trying to verify our domain, it appears the confirmation emails from Mailchimp to our club contact alias are being bounced. I have tried our contact, admin, and individual officer email aliases. There are no issues using these (and sending to them from other random senders).

I have whitelisted @mailchimp.com in the email security admin settings to no avail.

I appreciate any insight on how we might resolve this. I would like to use our club email address as the "from" address in our Mailchimp campaigns.

Thank you!

You haven't provided your club number - so we can't do any investigation. Make sure that your contact address is enabled: Contact Forms tab in Email & Contact Forms module.

Club number is 8045. My apologies.

It is quite possible Mailchimp being generators of spam maybe blocked by other means that the blacklist.
You would need to provide us the IP address mailchimp is using to send the authorizations.

205.201.128.0/20
198.2.128.0/18
148.105.0.0/16

From:
mailchimp.com/about/ips/

Hi all - do you happen to have any advice on this? Thanks!

I would like to use our club email address as the "from" address in our Mailchimp campaigns.

This is problematic as it is likely to cause emails from Mailchimp to be flagged by security software. (stated from does not match actual from)

Mailchimp verifies the domain through email confirmation. It's this verification I can't complete because FreeToastHost is blocking the emails from Mailchimp. It is quite standard for email marketing platforms to allow the user to verify a "from" email through email confirmation.

Here is the full article, including recommending the mail server (FreeToastHost) whitelists the IPs:
mailchimp.com/help/verify-a-domain/

All I'm trying to do is make sure emails FROM Mailchimp TO our club email aliases are not blocked, which they currently appear to be despite being on the whitelist.

Mailchimp is the most popular email marketing platform, so I imagine this would open up the opportunity for lots of clubs (and perhaps districts) to use these modern tools to engage guests/members!

198.2.128.0/18 was blocked for spamming FTH repeatedly
I have removed the block but the addresses maybe blocked again at anytime.

Thank you. I guess like Gmail, Yahoo, or any other large service with thousands/millions of users under the same email domain, you would expect lots of spam from any of these.

I wonder then if FTH shouldn't block the entire IP address but rather the individual emails worthy of being blocked. I presume that's the purpose of the crowdsourced black list?

Depends on the kind of spam. We will take what ever steps we need to protect our server and our members.

Now we're having issues using our custom email addresses.

I can send to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

But I cannot send to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

I think the DNS records are incorrect, but I can't seem to add the required MX record (based on FTH documentation), because Google Domains says "Record already in use."

I'm trying to use:
Name: @
Type: MX
Data: 10 mail.talkituptoastmasters.org

A lookup shows these MX settings:
Type Pref Domain Name Hostname TTL
MX 5 talkituptoastmasters.org gmr-smtp-in.l.google.com 3599
MX 10 talkituptoastmasters.org alt1.gmr-smtp-in.l.google.com 3599
MX 20 talkituptoastmasters.org alt2.gmr-smtp-in.l.google.com 3599
MX 30 talkituptoastmasters.org alt3.gmr-smtp-in.l.google.com 3599
MX 40 talkituptoastmasters.org alt4.gmr-smtp-in.l.google.com 3599

What am I doing wrong here? Thanks for your help.

Sorry cannot help you, you decided not to use our server for email. You will have to figure it out on your own.

I'm sorry, I don't follow.

We WOULD like to use the FTH server for email, so my question is what am I doing wrong with settings that prevents this from working?

Based on the info I provided, do you know what I need to fix to use the aliases properly again (as we've done for a few years) with our custom domain?

Remove all the google MX records and add the single FTH required MX
You can only use the email forwarders FTH provides. You might be able to do something with the email groups you will need to read the documentation.
We do not provide email accounts.

Generally speaking, in order to integrate FTH with third party service providers, you would enter one of the public officer email addresses as the registered email address for verification purposes. The officer email address should be one that forwards directly to you, so that you can complete any verification/confirmation steps for registering it. Keep in mind that all FTH email addresses are strictly distribution lists and forwarding email addresses--no accounts.

If you are not a club officer, the simplest thing to do is to just temporarily "make yourself one" in Membership Management. Users get all caught up in making sure that the officer settings actually match what is in reality. It is kind of overblown non-sense, since all you are really doing in MM is just effectively matching real world personal email addresses with the forwarding addresses (and dist lists) that FTH provides. You can change something temporarily (by setting an officer role) to be you to allow for a particular officer email address to be the one tied to a 3rd party service... just change it back once the verification is done and you have done the verification. With this approach, I have sometimes been every club officer in a club within a short timeframe.

If you do this, I *strongly* recommend using the club number version of the FTH email address. Clubs change custom domain names all the time, they expire, they change club names, etc. etc. If you use the club number version, you will never face an interruption because of future changes after you have moved on to other things. This is also why I tend to not recommend using custom domains w/ third party service providers. Custom domains are a "nice to have" and if you make too many things dependent on them, you are effectively setting up your club for future problems. We have seen this over and over again w/ custom domains --clubs always say "oh sure, we will certainly remember to renew it before the expiration date"... but today's commitment is not a guarantee of future club sentiments.

I found the issue. Google Domains has a separate "synthetic records" area where they hide the mail forwarding settings and thus all the Google MX records. I was able to delete those, which then allowed me to add the one MX record to my DNS settings.

I understand it could take time to propagate, but I expect it will work.

Thanks for guiding me to consider other settings I might not have found otherwise!