The Missing Link in Your Sales Stack: A Non-Technical Guide to MX Records Your outbound emails are just one side of the conversation. Discover the basics of MX records, how they relate to receiving replies from prospects, and how to configure them properly.

The Missing Link in Your Sales Stack: A Non-Technical Guide to MX Records MX record indicates other mail servers where the messages for a specific domain should be delivered. In terms of sales engagement, it means that a prospect's reply will find its way back to you.

While spending hours fine-tuning your sequences, you might miss out on the conversation because of the incorrect setup of your inbound mail. Before adjusting the sequence copy, send yourself a message through the sales address from an external account. And then reply to the message sent from the outreach tool. These two tests will tell you a lot more than an outbound success check.

What MX record consists of? MX stands for mail exchanger. It is located within your domain's DNS settings and references the hostname of the mail server provided by your email provider.

Name/Host: domain receiving the mail. The name of the root domain might be presented in DNS control panel as "@" sign. Destination: hostname of your provider's mail server, not the mailbox itself or website URL. Priority: lowest numbers have priority if there are multiple MX records. TTL: period of time, during which the DNS answer is allowed to be cached. MX record is responsible for incoming mail routing. Outbound sender authorization is performed separately and explained in our SPF and DKIM guide.

How to configure MX records without interrupting the replies

1. Find out who hosts your DNS and email Your hosting of the website, domain registration, DNS hosting, and email provider might be with different vendors. You need to edit DNS records in your authoritative DNS. Get the values for configuration from the email provider's current setup instructions or administration console.

For example, use Google Workspace MX record configuration guide if you want to use Workspace account. Don't copy someone else's Microsoft 365 destination, since the settings might be different.

2. Prepare the receiving mailboxes Setup the mailboxes and aliases, to which the mail will be routed in advance. Check the addresses that are used by your sales tools, including possible different Reply-To address. No MX record will save you from non-existent or misspelled mailbox.

When switching the providers, make sure that you have an agreement with the person managing your email about the cutover procedure. Make sure that the previous service remains available during the transition process, if your migration plan requires it.

3. Document your current DNS configuration Write down each MX record, its priority, and TTL. Find out if there is a gateway or security service intentionally positioned before your mail provider, before making changes. It will be helpful for you to recover the situation in case of failed configuration.

4. Apply the full configuration of your provider Use the exact hostnames and priorities provided by the provider. Remove the obsolete MX records as a part of your planned switch, instead of removing all the inbound mail routes before the replacement is applied. Old and new records not related to the cutover might redirect the message through unexpected route.

5. Test your DNS and the entire reply flow Use this read-only command on Windows to get MX answers from your configured DNS:

nslookup -type=mx example.com Example.com is your domain. The cached answers can persist for the duration of TTL, so there is no universal fifteen minutes completion time.

Then run the tests in both directions from external mailbox. Verify that the reply appeared in the receiving inbox and separately in the sales platform. DNS routing and application synchronization are two distinct steps of the journey.

MX record is correct, but the replies are still missing Check mailbox provisioning, aliases, storage limit, quarantine, forwarding rules, and the reply address itself. If the reply reaches webmail but not your outreach platform, troubleshoot the mailbox connection via our IMAP guide.

Document the sending address, recipient address, approximate time of the attempt, and any delivery errors for the administrator. This information will allow you to troubleshoot the problem much faster than a general issue that the email is "broken".

Is it necessary to configure the MX record for the domain? According to the SMTP protocol, there is the MX record fallback mechanism when there are no MX records defined. However, it does not mean that you can neglect the setup required by your hosted provider.

Correctly configured MX records will allow the replies to find the way back to you, but they do not provide any guarantees for inbox placement of your outbound messages. When you are done with both sides, CadenceKing's sales engagement workflows will help you to structure the follow-ups.