How do I setup a subdomain for email sending with Klaviyo?
Summary
What email marketers say12Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Gmass explains that to check your sender score you should use tools like Sender Score and Google Postmaster Tools. These tools help to determine if your emails are likely to be marked as spam and to maintain good sending practices.
Email marketer from Stack Overflow explains that setting up DKIM involves generating a DKIM key pair in Klaviyo, adding the public key as a TXT record in your DNS settings, and then enabling DKIM signing in Klaviyo. This ensures that your emails are digitally signed and verified by receiving mail servers.
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that you’ll still have the subdomain but it’s not a web hosting subdomain and if it is it’s just going to need a CNAME to allow for the link branding and the platform’s sending domain authentication wizard should walk you through all you need to do, except for setting up a custom branded CNAME with SSL.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that using a subdomain helps separate your marketing emails from transactional emails, protecting your main domain's reputation and preventing potential deliverability issues. Setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records is crucial for authenticating your subdomain.
Email marketer from SendGrid Blog explains that warming up your IP address involves gradually increasing the volume of emails you send over time to establish a positive sending reputation with ISPs. Start with small batches and monitor your deliverability metrics closely.
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that you don’t need to create the subdomain, for email it just needs to be created synthetically, basically by setting up SPF and DKIM in DNS and that DMARC already automatically covers all possible subdomains, they don't recommend setting a policy on a subdomain by default, only as an exception with a good reason.
Email marketer from Email on Acid shares that implementing DMARC involves creating a DMARC record in your DNS settings that specifies how receiving mail servers should handle emails that fail SPF and DKIM checks. You can set the policy to 'none', 'quarantine', or 'reject' based on your risk tolerance.
Email marketer from MailerQ explains that to improve your domain reputation, you should consistently send high-quality, relevant content to engaged subscribers, avoid spam triggers in your email content, and promptly address any deliverability issues.
Email marketer from ZeroBounce shares that regularly cleaning your email list by removing invalid, inactive, and spam trap addresses is crucial for maintaining a good sender reputation and improving deliverability.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares that you may need to set up an A record to support a custom branded PTR (rDNS) for your dedicated IP and that Klaviyo uses CNAMES to manage SPF, DKIM, and custom link branding.
Email marketer from Litmus shares that monitoring deliverability involves tracking metrics such as bounce rates, spam complaints, and inbox placement rates. Use tools like Google Postmaster Tools and Sender Score to gain insights into your sending reputation.
Email marketer from Mailtrap Blog shares that to set up a subdomain for email sending with Klaviyo, you need to create a subdomain in your DNS settings and then add the DNS records provided by Klaviyo (CNAME and TXT records) to that subdomain. This process authenticates your emails and improves deliverability.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise recommends implementing DMARC to safeguard your domain reputation and protect recipients from email phishing attacks. Setting up DMARC with a policy of 'quarantine' or 'reject' can help improve deliverability and security.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that using a separate subdomain for marketing emails can help protect your primary domain's reputation. Ensure the subdomain is properly authenticated with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Expert from Email Geeks agrees with LB and they should provide you with a guide of specifically what you should do. It's not uncommon to see an ESP tell you to create a subdomain and then delegate authority to them and somewhere in that process they may have additional steps for you, but in some cases, quite a bit of that is handled for you as part of their setup.
Expert from Word to the Wise responds that ensuring proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) for your sending subdomain is crucial. Without proper authentication, your emails are more likely to be flagged as spam by receiving mail servers.
Expert from Spam Resource shares that using a dedicated IP address for your Klaviyo account can help you establish a positive sending reputation. It's important to warm up the IP address gradually by slowly increasing your sending volume over time.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from SparkPost explains that feedback loops (FBLs) are a mechanism by which ISPs forward complaints from their users back to the sender. Registering for FBLs with major ISPs allows you to identify and remove subscribers who are marking your emails as spam.
Documentation from Cloudflare Support explains that adding DNS records involves logging into your Cloudflare account, selecting your domain, navigating to the DNS settings, and then adding the required records (A, CNAME, MX, TXT) with the values provided by Klaviyo to point the subdomain to Klaviyo's servers for email sending.
Documentation from RFC explains that a PTR record (Pointer Record) is a type of DNS record that resolves an IP address to a domain name (reverse DNS lookup). Setting up a PTR record for your sending IP address can improve email deliverability by verifying your identity.
Documentation from Klaviyo Help Center explains that connecting a sending domain involves configuring DNS records (CNAME, MX, TXT) with your DNS provider to authenticate your email sending, improve deliverability, and ensure compliance with email authentication standards like SPF and DKIM.
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains that an SPF record is a TXT record that specifies which mail servers are authorized to send email on behalf of your domain. To set up SPF for your Klaviyo subdomain, you need to include Klaviyo's SPF record in your DNS settings.