DNS
What is TXT Record?
A DNS record type that holds arbitrary text, used to publish SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication policies.
A TXT record stores free-form text values attached to a domain or subdomain in DNS. Email authentication standards reuse TXT records to publish machine-readable policies: SPF at the root domain, DKIM public keys at a selector subdomain, and DMARC at the _dmarc name. Receiving mail servers query these specific TXT records during the authentication check.
Why it matters for cold email
Nearly all cold-email authentication is configured through TXT records, so understanding their syntax prevents the typos and duplicate-record errors that break SPF or DMARC. A single malformed TXT value can cause authentication to fail across all of your sending domains at once.
Related terms
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