Lets say I have a domain that I run a web app on, for example cranketywidgets.com, and I'm using google apps for handle email for people work work on that domain, i.e. support@ cranketywidgets.com, [email protected], [email protected] and so on.

Google's own mail services aren't always the best for sending automated reminder emails, comment notifications and so on, so the current solution I plan to pursue is to create a separate subdomain called mailer.cranketywidgets.com, run a mail server off it, and create a few accounts specifically for sending these kinds of emails.

What should the mx records and a records look like here for this?

I'm somewhat confused by the fact that mx records can be names, but that they must eventually resolve to an A record. What should the records look like here?

cranketywidgets.com - A record to actual server like 10.24.233.214

cranketywidgets.com - mx records for google's email apps

mailer.cranketywidgets.com - mx name pointing to server's ip address

Would greatly appeciate some help on this - the answer seems like it'll be obvious, but email spam is a difficult problem to solve.