The beginner’s guide to using custom domains for email marketing

So, you could have crafted compelling content material for your weekly newsletters and have ambitions to monetize your experience. Or, you could have packed your ecommerce providing in a set of engaging bulk emails to drive your gross sales outcomes.

But, you determined to ship them out out of your free email handle on Gmail or Yahoo!

What occurs subsequent? Most of your emails don’t even attain your potential clients’ inboxes. And those that handle to get by find yourself with dramatically low engagement. 

The end result? All your earlier efforts go to the trash bin. Why? Because in the event you ship mass marketing emails out of your Gmail, you’ll both find yourself in a spam folder or be rejected by an Internet Service Provider (ISP).

And even in the event you fortunately bypass it, will your recipients belief you in the event that they see a suggestion from [email protected]? Would you? Of course not.

That’s why, to get greater deliverability and to achieve folks’s belief, you want to arrange your personal custom area.

In this text, we are going to break it down for you!

Table Of Contents

What is a custom area?

A custom area is a novel branded title related together with your web site’s IP handle. Think of your branded area as your personal net actual property — a spot the place your potential clients go to uncover details about your organization and your services and products.

It’s the best and most basic manner to get folks to go to your web site. Nobody on this planet would kind a collection of IP digits of their handle bar. They would enter a root area akin to google.com, getresponse.com 😇, and yourdomain.com.

URL structure – domain, subdomain, protocol.URL consisting of the protocol, subdomain, area, and top-level area.

And what’s a custom email area?

You can use a custom area not solely to model your web site. You also can use it to model your emails and your email marketing campaigns.

In different phrases, as an alternative of using a free email handle, e.g. [email protected], you possibly can ship emails using a custom email handle, e.g. [email protected]

Custom email domains not solely look higher in your recipient’s inboxes and assist you construct credibility. They’re additionally most popular by the mailbox and Internet Service Providers, as they assist them higher establish the individual or corporations behind these emails.

Email handle with a custom subdomain and area.

Why it’s essential to use custom domains

“Don’t build your house on a rented land” — marketing consultants hold repeating this line like a mantra. And whereas they’re primarily referring to fixed algorithm modifications on social media platforms, they’ve some extent.

It’s not solely about your model proudly owning its property on the Internet. Building an internet site or promoting your small business using a custom area is step one to guaranteeing your website guests that you’re a longtime enterprise entity they will belief.

Speaking of belief, let’s dive into:

Five advantages of using a custom area

1. Brand consistency

Wherever folks come throughout your model – on social media, in visitor articles, software program evaluation websites, market listings, or of their email inboxes, they may finally enter your personal title in Google or the handle bar in your browser. They would count on to see a custom area that matches your organization’s title. And talking of your presence in engines like google…

2. Organic visitors

Generating a stream of visitors from engines like google has been on the radar of in all probability each marketing crew and small enterprise on the market. In phrases of search engine optimization, branded key phrases (ultimately, your model title turns into a key phrase) change into a supply of incoming crowds of holiday makers. Here’s an instance of Slack and the way it dominates in search outcomes for their branded key phrases:

Slack's keyword positions in the search engine resultsSlack’s key phrase positions within the search engine outcomes

3. Efficient touchdown pages

Whenever you launch a marketing campaign and create a conversion-optimized touchdown web page, you’ll ramp up your probabilities of getting extra outcomes when your touchdown web page sits inside your custom area as an alternative of a generic URL. Again, it’s about credibility, consistency, and belief.

4. Higher email deliverability

Speaking of campaigns — in case you have a custom area set, you’ll ship all of your marketing messages, bulk emails, and newsletters from a custom email area. This means you’ll considerably lower the danger of being marked as spam or blocked by an ISP. 

5. Refined sender fame

Looking legit for Internet Service Providers is a step in the correct path. But in the long run, it’s your audience that you’ve got to persuade that you just’re not a scammer however a dependable firm with a legit enterprise title. You received’t have a second likelihood to make the primary impression. Sending your first email with related content material from a branded area title will translate into your fame as a sender and additional engagement.

Four dangers of NOT using a custom domains

1. Brand authority difficulty

If you’re making an attempt to get your services or products on the market, doing so with a generic area or no area received’t take you wherever. People (particularly within the B2B world) have a a lot decrease willingness to buy, so it takes loads of effort to persuade them to make room of their budgets for one thing new. And if the vendor comes with no area and sends emails from Gmail, which means a purple flag.

2. Missing out on search engine optimization

Without having a custom area, there’s no possibility to begin getting visitors from engines like google. And even in the event you shortly arrange your web site with one of many common free web site builders and publish it beneath a generic area and not using a connection to your model, gaining excessive positions for branded key phrases shall be not possible. And SEO is a should.

3. Your emails blocked or marked as SPAM

Malicious actions akin to phishing, abuse, spoofing, or fraudulent emails are a plague that’s giving cyber safety consultants a headache. To defend customers from these threats, digital platforms throughout the board have applied anti-spam and anti-abuse packages. This can be the case with suppliers like Gmail or Hotmail – they’ve strict safety insurance policies in place. So, in the event you’re not compliant with DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) email authentication protocol, you’re risking receiving an auto-reply like this:

“This message does not pass authentication checks (SPF and DKIM both). SPF check for [domain name] does not pass with ip: [number] To best protect our users from spam, the message [number] has been blocked”.

4. Your sender fame on the bottom

Being marked as a spammer will harm your deliverability charges, however that’s not the top of the difficulty. Even if, miraculously, your marketing messages move that guard, the general impression of you as a sender will nonetheless be dodgy.

How to get a custom area for email marketing

OK, since we’re on the identical web page concerning the aim of getting a custom area, let’s dig into the method of setting it up, having your email marketing as a North Star.

There are two cornerstones right here — to transfer ahead, you could have to:

There is a chicken-egg scenario right here as a result of you possibly can both begin with an email supplier or head straight to one of many area registrars.

In most instances, essentially the most handy manner can be to purchase and register a custom area from an internet host.

For occasion, in GoDaddy, your checklist of merchandise will include your personal area title, DNS, and your custom email domains.

Once you could have that, you need to use your inbox by GoDaddy webmail or – you possibly can configure Microsoft Outlook – each on desktop and cellular.

Your subsequent step shall be creating aliases for your crew member/workers (assigned names, for instance, [email protected], [email protected]), or for completely different roles or job features ([email protected], [email protected], or [email protected]). 

Compliance as a key to greater deliverability

You’ve picked and acquired your personal custom area — nice! What’s subsequent? Making positive all the things is engaged on the technical aspect. You already seen a couple of acronyms: DMARC, SPF, and DKIM.

And if it was your first response, don’t fear. You’re not alone!

But by way of profitable email marketing campaigns, these are safety desk stakes. In the world of malicious actors making an attempt to invade networks with phishing assaults, you want to double down on this side.

Especially the place you don’t need anybody to hijack your email and ship nasty stuff to folks pretending it’s you.

So, ensure to:

1. Be DMARC-friendly.

Enabling this authentication protocol will defend you from phishing and spoofing. To set it up, go to your net host and discover the DNS subsequent to your custom area title. Next, add a TXT document to your DNS. Find extra details about DMARC on this article.

DNS showing different records.Domain Name Settings displaying completely different data.

2. Customize your DKIM to maximize your email marketing.

DomainKeys Identified Mail is an email authentication technique that helps to detect solid sender addresses and hyperlinks your area to the email messages you ship. For occasion, in the event you use GetResponse as your email marketing platform and also you received’t have a custom DKIM, your recipients will see your emails like this:

[email protected] com via GetResponse-mail.com”

To do away with the “via GetResonse-mail” half, you want to:

  • go to your GetResponse dashboard and authenticate your email area
  • generate the DKIM key
  • copy the TXT host and worth 
  • go to your internet hosting account, and add a TXT document within the DNS itemizing
  • enter your TXT credentials and reserve it.

DKIM – domain key example.Example

Here you’ll find a video displaying precisely how to do it.

3. Check the SPF

Sender Policy Framework serves the identical goal as the 2 above, and integrates with DMARC to detect phishing and spam schemes. And identical to within the case of the 2 earlier strategies, you want to go to your area host.

Once you’re there, choose the DNS subsequent to your area, and make sure the SPF document is there. It ought to look this:

v=spf1…

It shall be greatest to contact buyer help to get assist with sorting it out.

How to create a enterprise email handle in GetResponse, routinely

OK, there are a lot of transferring components, and also you may really feel overwhelmed by the technical aspect.

The excellent news is that you are able to do it sooner and with out all that effort.

And right here’s how GetResponse might help you obtain that:

  • Go to the Website Builder and buy a website from there. Yes, you don’t have to go to a third-party area registrar!
  • Go to your Profile, choose the Email Addresses possibility, and create your custom email handle.
  • Adding custom email address inside GetResponse.Adding custom email handle inside GetResponse.

    What will you obtain this fashion?

    • From one place, you should purchase your personal area and create an related email handle. 
    • You don’t have to know the technicalities and commute between the platforms — DMARC, DKIM, and SPF are routinely configured.
    • You are on the secure aspect concerning safety, belief, and deliverability!

    Start a brand new chapter in your email marketing!

    At this stage, you understand:

    • what’s a custom area title,
    • why selecting custom domains over a free email and generic domains is the one manner to construct belief and model consciousness.
    • And that making a custom email handle compliant with safety insurance policies permits you to get your marketing message delivered.

    But that is the place your journey as a profitable email marketer begins! Check out our tips on maximizing your email deliverability and getting greater ROI out of your campaigns!

    Excited? You shall be much more while you begin taking part in round with all GetResponse options for FREE for 30 days!