Should I send email from a client's primary domain or a subdomain?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Email marketer from GMass responds by explaining that using a subdomain is a common way to send emails and protect the main domain's sender reputation. This ensures that if your marketing emails face deliverability issues, your primary domain is unaffected.
Email marketer from SparkPost shares that using a subdomain allows you to manage and protect your sender reputation separately from your main domain, which is crucial for maintaining deliverability and avoiding impact on business-critical emails.
Email marketer from Moosend shares the importance of using a subdomain to protect your main domain’s reputation. This helps prevent potential harm from marketing campaigns affecting your brand's overall email communications.
Email marketer from Reddit mentions in a thread that when sending cold emails, using a dedicated subdomain is important. This protects the primary domain's reputation, which is essential for main business communications.
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign responds by explaining that using a subdomain as part of a long-term strategy. This is because it allows you to establish, monitor, and maintain a healthy sender reputation over time.
Email marketer from Litmus shares that using a separate subdomain to send promotional emails allows marketers to protect their primary domain's sender reputation. This means that the important business emails are safe from any negative impacts.
Email marketer from Web Hosting Talk Forum shares that subdomains might dilute brand perception if not implemented carefully. It's important that branding is consistent across the business to maintain the professional look of communications.
Email marketer from HubSpot shares that one of the best practices is setting up a subdomain and authenticating it, as this helps protect your brand's reputation and improve deliverability by allowing email providers to verify the sender's legitimacy.
Email marketer from SendGrid explains that using a subdomain can allow you to maintain more granular control over sender reputation, which is essential for optimizing email deliverability and troubleshooting issues without affecting primary business email.
Email marketer from Mailjet explains that using a subdomain isolates your email marketing reputation from your primary domain, protecting your main website's deliverability if your email campaigns encounter issues.
What the experts say8Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks notes that using the primary domain means sharing reputation between the client's mail stream and other mail using their main domain, which might be a problem if the client isn't conscientious.
Expert from Email Geeks advises to clarify that the client wants their domain in the From header, mention shared reputation as a reason for subdomains, and if they're okay with it, move forward with aligned authentication.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that you have to have a subdomain of the brand in the 821.From for any of that to work well.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that if the ESP supports authentication, there is no definitive reason why the client shouldn't send email from their primary domain, but it is important to clarify the client's goal is to have their main domain in the From header.
Expert from Spamresource explains that setting up a subdomain is a good idea if you are separating out different streams of email traffic, but be sure not to include a brand name in the subdomain that you are not authorised to use. This will potentially cause filtering issues.
Expert from Word to the Wise notes that a benefit of using subdomains is that you can test new programs, IP addresses, and vendors. This allows for a more conservative approach to email, which minimizes possible deliverability damage.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that the client shouldn't add Mailgun to their main SPF record and ideally should have a return path that’s a subdomain of theirs, with SPF set up for that subdomain to ensure DMARC alignment.
Expert from Email Geeks answers that .org domains are not excluded from the new email rules and that the rules have been in place since February, with enforcement ramping up.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains that you can add a subdomain to your Google Workspace account and set up custom email addresses with it. This can be beneficial for segmenting email streams or testing purposes, thereby suggesting a strategic use of subdomains.
Documentation from MailChannels shares using a subdomain for high-volume email sending to avoid negative impact on the main domain's reputation and deliverability. If there are issues with the email being sent, it won't stop other important emails being sent from the main domain.
Documentation from RFC 3834 specifies that the domain name used for sending email should clearly identify the sender and be consistently used to build trust with recipients, without explicitly recommending a subdomain or primary domain.
Documentation from DMARC.org explains that DMARC allows domain owners to protect their domain from unauthorized use, such as spoofing. While it doesn't explicitly prefer subdomains, it does show the importance of domain authentication for email security.