Should I use separate IPs or domains for transactional vs marketing emails?
Summary
What email marketers say11Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Mailjet explains that segmenting email traffic based on type (transactional vs. marketing) by using different IPs or domains is a key deliverability best practice. This separation helps maintain a good reputation for transactional emails, ensuring important messages reach the inbox.
Email marketer from Email Geeks explains that, in general, transactional emails get better engagement, very low spam complaints, and lower bounces leading to better deliverability, hence the hesitation to mix those in with the marketing emails where mileage varies more widely than transactional.
Email marketer from Stackoverflow answers you should get a dedicated IP address if you are sending more than a certain ammount of email. You can use this for the more important transaction emails.
Email marketer from Gmass recommends using separate sending domains for transactional and marketing emails as one strategy of improving your sender reputation. This ensures your marketing emails are less likely to impact deliverability of transactional emails.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that they always advise clients to separate transactional and marketing emails using different subdomains and, if possible, different IPs. This protects the crucial transactional emails from being affected by potential deliverability problems with marketing campaigns.
Email marketer from SparkPost recommends using subdomains to separate email traffic types. For instance, use 'transactional.example.com' for transactional emails and 'marketing.example.com' for marketing emails. This segmentation helps maintain a cleaner reputation for each type of email.
Email marketer from Klaviyo shares Using a dedicated sending domain for transactional emails can help you protect the health of your primary domain by separating out the sending reputation, and improve deliverability.
Email marketer from Postmark shares that transactional emails should be separated from marketing emails to protect domain reputation. Transactional emails often have higher engagement rates and separating them ensures their deliverability isn't affected by marketing campaigns.
Email marketer from EmailGeekForum shares that If using different IPs for different email types, you absolutely MUST warm up each IP address individually and correctly before sending a lot of mail, especially marketing material. This protects your sender reputation.
Email marketer from Mailgun suggests IP segmentation to prevent bad actors from affecting their clients. IP segmentation divides your email traffic into different types (e.g. transactional, marketing, bulk email) and assign each traffic type to a different IP address.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares that proper transactional mail should definitely have better engagement and higher reputation and should definitely be split from General Purpose/Marketing mail.
What the experts say6Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks shares the general recommendation to split corporate, marketing, and transactional emails into separate domains/subdomains and authenticate them with SPF, DKIM.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that deliverability can take many forms and reputation is tracked in a few different ways, including IP reputation and domain reputation.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests splitting mail over multiple IPs, one for marketing and one for transactional.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that separating email streams, like transactional and marketing, is essential for maintaining deliverability. They advise using separate IPs or subdomains to isolate the reputation of each stream, preventing marketing email issues from affecting critical transactional messages.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that IP splitting is a recommended practice to have segmentation on both subdomain and IP reputation measurements, noting that transactional email tends to have better engagement and a higher reputation.
Expert from Word to the Wise, Laura Atkins, responds that using multiple domains for mail streams ensures that your reputation for your marketing efforts does not affect the receipt of order confirmations.
What the documentation says3Technical articles
Documentation from Amazon SES explains that using dedicated IP pools allows you to separate sending reputation for different types of emails. This means you can have one pool for transactional emails and another for marketing emails, isolating any deliverability issues.
Documentation from SendGrid recommends using dedicated IPs for different types of email traffic, such as transactional and marketing. This allows for better control over sender reputation and can improve deliverability for both types of emails, as their sending patterns and volumes differ.
Documentation from Google Workspace recommends that senders using the same domain for multiple purposes (e.g., bulk email and transactional email) should separate those emails for the purpose of reputation management. This separation can be achieved by sending from different IP addresses for each purpose.