How can I compare the success of two different sending domains in Gmail?
Summary
What email marketers say11Marketer opinions
Email marketer from SendGrid shares that Domain reputation is crucial for email deliverability. Use tools to track your sender score, identify any blacklistings that might affect deliverability, and monitor engagement rates for each domain.
Email marketer from Reddit shares their process of tracking email performance through UTM parameters, ensuring the correct domain is in place and analysing the metrics on Google Analytics.
Email marketer from HubSpot shares that Domain reputation is key for email deliverability. Use tools to track your sender score, identify any blacklistings that might affect deliverability, and monitor engagement rates for each domain. You also need to look at domain age.
Email marketer from Mailchimp explains that campaign reports can be used to compare the performance of different sending domains. By segmenting your audience based on the domain they were sent from, you can analyze metrics like open rates, click rates, and unsubscribes for each domain.
Email marketer from Email on Acid shares that monitoring sender reputation is crucial for comparing sending domains. Use tools to track your sender score and identify any blacklistings that might affect deliverability. Different domains may have varying reputations.
Email marketer from Stack Overflow suggests setting up custom tracking parameters for each sending domain to differentiate traffic in Google Analytics. Monitor metrics like bounce rate, time on site, and conversion rate to assess domain performance.
Email marketer from Gmass explains setting up A/B split tests. You can use different domains for the variations, allowing you to see how each domain performs regarding opens, clicks, replies, bounces, and spam complaints.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares to extract both reports, drop them into Excel/Google Sheets, and use math to see each side-by-side.
Email marketer from Woodpecker shares setting up tracking metrics can tell you about how well your domains are performing. Set clear goals and then track opens, clicks, replies, bounces, and spam complaints, so you can measure the domains performance.
Email marketer from Neil Patel's Blog explains that A/B testing different sending domains can provide insights into which domain performs better in terms of engagement and deliverability. He recommends tracking metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates for each domain.
Email marketer from Litmus answers that differing domain reputations directly influence deliverability and engagement. Use domain-specific tracking in email campaigns to isolate data, and then use analytics to compare open rates, clicks, and conversions for each domain.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise, Laura Atkins, responds that proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is fundamental. Compare the authentication setups of each sending domain. If one domain lacks proper authentication, its deliverability will likely suffer, making a direct comparison difficult.
Expert from Email Geeks mentions to access metrics from whatever you’re currently using to track them.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests using existing reporting to chart opens, clicks, bounces, unsubs, and spam reports across each domain for comparison.
Expert from Word to the Wise, Halvar Flake, shares ensuring clear separation of traffic types across domains. Using one domain for transactional emails and another for marketing emails allows you to accurately monitor and manage the deliverability and engagement rates associated with each type of communication. This makes comparison more meaningful.
Expert from Spam Resource, John Levine, explains that domain reputation is heavily influenced by sending volume and consistency. To compare domains effectively, ensure both domains have a comparable sending history and volume to Gmail users; otherwise, the comparison will be skewed.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from RFC details about SPF standards, checking that all domains used have valid SPF records to ensure better deliverability to Gmail users.
Documentation from DKIM.org explains implementing DKIM for all domains used. DKIM impacts your domain reputation and helps improve delivery rates.
Documentation from Google explains that Google Workspace Admin Help provides tools to monitor domain reputation. You can use these tools to track metrics like spam complaints and authentication status for each of your sending domains, helping you identify potential deliverability issues.
Documentation from Google explains that Google Postmaster Tools provides insights into your domain's health when sending to Gmail users. Key metrics to monitor include spam rate, IP reputation, and authentication compliance for each sending domain to assess performance.