Email marketing glossary

DNS for email

The domain name system (DNS) is a way to name and identify computers that companies can reach through the internet or other IP networks.

As far as DNS for email is concerned, it all starts after email marketers send an email. First, the mail exchange (MX) record for DNS routes the email to a particular MX server. The MX record then indicates where a particular email message should be delivered. At this point, the simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) carries the email to a receiving mail server, where the internet message access protocol (IMAP) retrieves the message and places it in the subscriber’s inbox.