Should I use subdomains for promotional and transactional emails on a shared IP?
Summary
What email marketers say11Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Litmus responds that it's crucial to separate email streams using subdomains when on a shared IP. This approach helps to manage sender reputation and ensures that transactional emails, which are vital for user experience, aren't affected by any deliverability issues with promotional emails.
Email marketer from GMass explains that employing subdomains can help improve deliverability on shared IPs. By separating promotional and transactional emails, you prevent the negative reputation from promotional emails affecting transactional emails. If there are any deliverability problems, they stay isolated to a smaller subdomain.
Email marketer from EmailGeek explains that segmenting email traffic through subdomains helps protect your sender reputation, ensuring transactional emails maintain high deliverability rates by isolating them from potential problems affecting promotional campaigns. This becomes even more critical on shared IPs.
Email marketer from GlockApps explains that using subdomains helps isolate deliverability issues. If your promotional emails have problems, your transactional emails sent from a different subdomain won't be impacted, ensuring consistent delivery for important notifications.
Marketer from Email Geeks seconds the recommendation of using one subdomain for promotional emails and one for transactional emails.
Email marketer from MailerCheck shares that when using subdomains to separate email streams, you can monitor each one individually for deliverability issues. This makes it easier to identify and address problems before they impact your overall sender reputation, which is especially valuable on shared IPs.
Email marketer from Sendinblue shares that separating your email streams using subdomains helps manage your sender reputation. If one subdomain has issues, it won't impact the others, ensuring important transactional emails are delivered reliably. This is particularly helpful with shared IPs.
Email marketer from Mailjet explains that using subdomains to separate transactional and marketing emails allows you to isolate your sending reputation. If your marketing emails suffer deliverability issues, your transactional emails, which are critical for user experience, won't be affected.
Email marketer from SMTP2GO answers that using a subdomain for marketing/promotional emails is advisable. This practice helps maintain a clean sender reputation for your primary domain used for transactional emails. If your marketing campaigns encounter issues, your transactional emails remain unaffected.
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum shares that using subdomains protects the reputation of your transactional emails. By keeping promotional and transactional sends separate, you prevent potential issues with promotional emails from impacting the delivery rates of critical transactional emails.
Email marketer from Reddit explains using subdomains is a good idea for separating different types of email traffic (transactional vs. marketing). If you have a shared IP, this segregation can help protect your transactional emails from deliverability issues that might arise from marketing campaigns.
What the experts say3Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise, Laura Atkins, responds that when using a shared IP, it's beneficial to separate different mail streams via subdomains. Since others are using the same IP, their sending practices can impact your deliverability. By segregating promotional and transactional emails, you mitigate the risk of poor promotional mail practices affecting your transactional email delivery. It mentions that reputation is per domain, and subdomains can help manage this.
Expert from Email Geeks explains using a subdomain for the d= of the DKIM signature is a good practice, especially if promotional emails might cause deliverability problems. They suggest using separate subdomains for transactional (e.g., trans.whatever) and promotional emails (e.g., promo.whatever), reserving the root domain for corporate mail. This is Laura's preferred way of managing email domains.
Expert from Spam Resource, John Levine, shares that using subdomains to separate different types of mail (transactional vs. promotional) is generally a good idea to isolate reputation issues. This is especially important on shared IPs where one user's bad sending habits can impact everyone else. It prevents deliverability problems with promotional mail from affecting the delivery of transactional messages.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from RFC states DKIM signatures can be applied using different subdomains in the 'd=' tag. This practice allows for granular control over email authentication and helps to isolate the reputation of different email streams, which is especially useful with shared IPs.
Documentation from SparkPost shares using subdomains for different email streams (transactional, marketing) allows you to configure separate sender authentication (SPF, DKIM) for each. This level of control is beneficial when on shared IPs, as it allows you to fine-tune your deliverability strategy for each type of email.
Documentation from AuthSMTP states a well-structured email infrastructure includes using subdomains to separate email types. This allows for better management of sender reputation, particularly on shared IPs, by isolating the impact of deliverability issues to specific subdomains.
Documentation from Microsoft shares that maintaining a good sender reputation is essential for deliverability. Using subdomains to separate email types can help to protect the reputation of your transactional emails, as any issues with promotional emails won't directly affect the domain used for critical communications.
Documentation from Google explains that each subdomain can have its own SPF record, allowing you to authorize different sending sources for different types of email. This is important when using a shared IP, as you can specify which sources are allowed to send marketing vs. transactional emails.