How Crunch Increased Email Deliverability and Prevented Domain Spoofing with EasyDMARC

About the Customer

• Company: Crunch Fitness
• Headquarters: New York, NY, United States
• Founded: 1989
• Website: https://www.crunch.com
• Industry: Fitness and Wellness

Crunch Fitness is a global fitness brand operating hundreds of gyms worldwide. Known for its “No Judgments” philosophy, the company provides fitness facilities, personal training, and group classes designed to make exercise accessible and engaging for a diverse community of members. With millions of members and a large digital communication footprint, Crunch relies heavily on email to support marketing campaigns, member communications, billing notifications, and operational updates.

The Challenge: Severe Deliverability Issues and Limited Authentication Visibility

Before implementing EasyDMARC, Crunch struggled with major email deliverability issues across multiple sending platforms. The company sends millions of emails each month, but lacked clear visibility into how authentication policies were affecting delivery outcomes.

According to William Schellhaas, VP of Technology Infrastructure at Crunch, the situation became critical when the team discovered that most emails were not reaching recipients.“We had multiple sending sources that were sending millions of emails every month. When we checked our numbers, we were actually getting an 8% deliverability rate and 92% was going to quarantine. At that time we were unsure why.”

Although the team had basic awareness of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, they lacked the expertise and tooling needed to configure and manage them effectively.The issue quickly escalated internally as marketing campaigns failed to reach their intended audiences.

“My marketing department was seeing these numbers and flipping out because our emails were not getting through and they needed something to change,” William explains.

At the same time, the company began seeing impersonation attempts targeting internal employees, including spoofed emails pretending to come from the CEO.

“We saw attempts to spoof our CEO and get employees to take action. Our email security program at the time was outdated and couldn’t properly handle impersonation attacks.”

The Solution: Full Email Authentication Control with EasyDMARC

Crunch adopted EasyDMARC to gain full visibility and control over its email authentication environment.

One of the most impactful features during implementation was EasySPF, which allowed the team to authorize all legitimate sending sources despite technical limitations in traditional SPF records.

“We had so many senders that didn’t fit into SPF DNS text records. The field length was too long and we had to leave some out. The EasySPF feature of EasyDMARC was a no-brainer for us and one of the best things we ever did to get all of our senders authorized,” says William.

In addition to EasySPF, Crunch leveraged several EasyDMARC capabilities to strengthen its email infrastructure:

• Managed DMARC
• Managed DKIM
• Reputation Monitoring Service

These features allowed the team to safely test configurations before moving to full enforcement.

The Results: Near-Perfect Deliverability and Stronger Security

The EasyDMARC onboarding process played a key role in the project’s success. During implementation, the Crunch team deepened its understanding of authentication protocols while receiving guidance from EasyDMARC’s support engineers.

“During our onboarding with EasyDMARC, that’s when I really learned about SPF, DKIM, and DMARC,” William Schellhaas explains. “Your support has been top-notch and had answers to every question I brought up.”

After implementing EasyDMARC and enforcing proper authentication policies, Crunch experienced a dramatic improvement in email performance.Inbox placement for legitimate email increased from 8% to nearly 100% deliverability, allowing critical communications and marketing campaigns to reliably reach recipients.

The organization also gained continuous visibility into malicious activity targeting its domains. Spoofing attempts can now be easily identified in DMARC failure reports and blocked before reaching recipients.

“I still see malicious actors trying to spoof us in the failure reports, but the emails are being blocked,” mentions William.

Another key factor in Crunch’s success was the responsiveness and expertise of the EasyDMARC Support team.“They always have an answer. I never hear ‘I’ll get back to you.’ They already know the answer,” says William.

With EasyDMARC providing authentication visibility, sender control, and expert guidance, Crunch now operates with confidence that its emails are reaching members and customers while protecting its brand from impersonation attacks.