Putting all your eggs into one basket is a risky move. This applies to business Emails as well, which are best delivered when distributed carefully across multiple sender subdomains. There’s a number of reasons why you may want to branch out from the root to improve the performance of your campaigns down the line. Let’s talk about using Email subdomains for marketing and transactional communication purposes.
In this article we explain:
- The difference between an Email domain and subdomain.
- The benefits of using Email subdomains.
- The importance of separate subdomains in light of Google and Yahoo policy changes.
Understanding Email subdomains
A subdomain is a branch out of the parent domain, which can be used to send Emails just as any other address. Importantly, this branch can have its own IP and develop a reputation independently of other Email addresses.
Domain is the part that comes after the @ symbol, for instance, xyz@yourcompanyname.com which helps the recipient easily recognize you.
Subdomain is the part inserted between @ and the main domain, for instance, xyz@newsletter.yourcompanyname.com used for specific purposes like tracking, branding, or separating different types of Emails.
Email subdomain examples
Let’s have a quick look at some real-life examples of how different subdomains are used for specific purposes.
Importantly, to make the best use of subdomains, make sure you have a system in place that supports user engagement tracking and analytics for these individual addresses. Dividing subdomains in an Email marketing platform will allow you to better understand the overall effectiveness of your efforts and how well the particular audiences react to your communication.
1. Old Navy has a subdomain which allows them to track and compare the engagement they see against other channels, getting a better understanding of their customer preferences.
2. Udemy, on the other hand, uses an Email subdomain to measure the engagement of a particular group of their users, which is students who just signed up to learn with the platform.
3. HubSpot employs a subdomain to get a better understanding of which of the many content types they produce is getting the most engagement.
Using Email subdomains – best practices
If you’re still wondering why can’t you just send all your transactional Email and marketing Email from the address you already have, keep reading. The split of different types of communication you dispatch makes a lot of sense and can significantly benefit you. Here are best practices for using a dedicated subdomain to enhance Email deliverability.
Better communication segmentation
Using subdomains you can better segment your communication to maintain consistent engagement levels across different groups of recipients, which in turns boosts deliverability. If you’re sending your entire communication from a single address and there’s a segment within your audience that’s not too engaged, it will hurt the overall Email deliverability and the ability to reach those users who are interested in hearing from you indeed.
Once you have your audiences segmented, using distinct subdomains to reach them will further support your marketing campaigns. For instance, you may create a super simple division of customers into new ones, who just bought something from you for the first time, and those that have been consistently making purchases for some time already. Each of these groups can be receiving communication from a separate subdomain, helping you get a better grip of the engagement and informing further business decisions.
Control over root domain reputation
Since sender reputation is based mainly on the individual domain and IP address history, if any issues occur in the course of using a subdomain, they won’t affect your main domain or the other subdomains, keeping their Email reputation intact.
Tracking and analytics of marketing Email
Email subdomains allow for closer tracking of specific campaigns or types of content being sent. When setting up your analytics environment, simply create separate workflows for each subdomain to get more granular insights into performance or narrow down the source of issues, should they ever occur.
Setting up a subdomain for better branding
Depending on your individual business goals, you may want to create a distinct identity for each specific communication type. A subdomain allows you to succinctly convey a clear message from the start, letting them know what they can expect from this particular address.
Alignment with Email providers
In general, Email service providers like it when the same type of traffic is steadily coming from a specific subdomain. In the analysis process, bots learn to better recognize and distribute Emails into relevant inbox tabs when the same type of traffic is being consistently sent from the same subdomain which increases Email deliverability over time.
Why you should use a subdomain in the light of Gmail and Yahoo Mail policy changes
The recent policy changes Google and Yahoo introduced regarding sender domain authentication directly relate to the domain and subdomains you’re using for your Email campaigns.
In an effort to curb spam, phishing, and other cybersecurity threats, the two webmail giants now require everyone who dispatches 5,000+ Emails a day to authenticate their sender domain using the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols.
The default implementation of DMARC in particular applies to your global domain. The way you set it up can impact all types of Email you send if you’ve been doing it from a single address so far. This means that in case something’s not correctly set, all your marketing campaigns will become affected.
Send Emails and protect your domain reputation
The recommended course of action is to still follow through with the Email authentication of course, but test the process first on a subdomain and not have to worry about your main domain taking a potential reputation hit because of a sudden drop in performance
