How to Create an SPF Record for Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the most popular email marketing platforms for small businesses, nonprofits, and organizations that rely on newsletters and campaigns to stay connected with their audience. If you send marketing emails through Constant Contact using your own domain, you need an SPF record that authorizes their servers to send on your behalf. Without it, receiving mail servers may treat your campaigns as suspicious -- landing them in spam folders or blocking them outright.

This guide walks you through setting up SPF for Constant Contact, combining it with your everyday email provider, and verifying everything works.

The SPF Include for Constant Contact

Per Constant Contact's authentication guide, the SPF include mechanism for Constant Contact is:

include:spf.constantcontact.com

This single include covers all email sent through Constant Contact's platform, including marketing campaigns, automated email sequences, and event-related emails.

A basic SPF record using only Constant Contact looks like this:

v=spf1 include:spf.constantcontact.com -all

However, most businesses don't use Constant Contact as their only email service. You almost certainly have a separate provider -- like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 -- for everyday business email. In that case, you'll need to include both services in a single SPF record. The free SPF record generator makes it easy to build a record with all your services.

Step-by-Step: Creating Your SPF Record for Constant Contact

Common SPF Record Combinations With Constant Contact

Since Constant Contact handles marketing email, you'll almost always pair it with a primary email provider. Here are the most common combinations:

The most common scenario for small businesses is Constant Contact paired with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. If you also use a helpdesk or CRM that sends email, add its include too -- just keep an eye on the 10 DNS lookup limit.

Verifying Your SPF Record

After making DNS changes, always verify that your SPF record is live and correct.

Visit SPF Record Check and enter your domain. The tool shows your published SPF record, validates the syntax, counts DNS lookups, and highlights any problems. Make sure include:spf.constantcontact.com is present and the record has no errors.

Next, send a test campaign through Constant Contact to an email address you control (a personal Gmail account works well). Check the email headers on the receiving end and look for Authentication-Results: spf=pass. If you see spf=fail, the Constant Contact include may be missing or there's a syntax error in your record.

Common Mistakes With Constant Contact SPF Records

Adding a Second SPF Record

This is the most frequent mistake across all email services, and it happens often with Constant Contact. Businesses already have an SPF record for Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, then follow Constant Contact's setup guide and create a brand new TXT record. Two SPF records on the same domain cause a permerror per RFC 7208 -- breaking email authentication for everything, not just Constant Contact. Always edit your existing record instead.

Using the Wrong Include Value

The correct include is spf.constantcontact.com -- not constantcontact.com or mail.constantcontact.com. Using the wrong value means Constant Contact's servers won't be authorized, and your campaigns will fail SPF checks.

Forgetting to Add Your Primary Email Provider

Some users set up an SPF record with only Constant Contact, accidentally overwriting or replacing the include for their primary email provider. Your SPF record needs to cover every service that sends email as your domain. If you have Google Workspace and Constant Contact, both includes must be in the same record.

Not Checking the DNS Lookup Limit

Each include in your SPF record triggers one or more DNS lookups. RFC 7208 limits you to 10 total lookups. If you have many services, you could exceed this limit. Use SPF Record Check to count your lookups. If you're over 10, consider SPF flattening to reduce them.

Complete Your Email Authentication

SPF is an important first step, but it works best alongside DKIM and DMARC. Together, these three protocols give you the strongest email authentication and the best deliverability:

• SPF authorizes which servers can send email for your domain (what you just set up)
• DKIM adds a cryptographic signature to each email, verifying it hasn't been altered. Use DKIM Creator to generate your DKIM keys
• DMARC tells receiving servers how to handle emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks. Use DMARC Creator to build your DMARC policy

Constant Contact supports DKIM signing for your campaigns. Enabling DKIM alongside SPF gives receiving mail servers two independent ways to verify your email is legitimate, significantly improving your chances of reaching the inbox.

Monitor Your SPF Record

Your Constant Contact SPF setup is complete -- but DNS records can be accidentally deleted, overwritten during domain migrations, or broken by other changes. Daily monitoring catches issues before they impact your campaign deliverability.