Email communication plays a critical role in how businesses engage with their audience, whether it's for marketing campaigns, customer service, or transactional updates. As your email strategy grows, so does the complexity of managing different types of messages and maintaining a strong sender reputation.
One effective solution to streamline this process and boost deliverability is the use of email subdomains. In this article, we'll explore how email subdomains can help your business maintain organized, efficient communication while safeguarding your reputation and ensuring your emails reach their intended recipients.
What is an email subdomain?
Email subdomains are extensions of your primary domain, designed specifically for organizing email communication.
For example, if your main domain is "yourbusiness.com," an email subdomain could be "email.yourbusiness.com." While it shares the root domain, a subdomain operates independently and often has its own unique IP address, allowing for more effective email management.
Subdomains offer a powerful way to categorize and streamline email communication by separating different functions or departments within an organization. This separation ensures that emails are organized and managed more efficiently.
For example, if you work at Example Inc. and receive an email from "someone@sales.example.com," you can instantly recognize that the email is related to sales. This structure makes it easier to manage emails, reducing confusion and improving communication by ensuring messages reach the right recipients.
Why use an email subdomain?
Maintaining a positive sender reputation is paramount for email deliverability. Email subdomains act as a protective shield for your root domain's reputation.
1. Protect your root domain’s reputation
When you send emails from a subdomain, you isolate its sender reputation. This means that any issues with one subdomain won't affect the root domain or the other subdomains. In contrast, a shared root domain can be impacted by the performance of all emails sent from it.
2. Simplify reputation recovery
Should a subdomain encounter deliverability problems, it's easier to address and rectify without harming your root domain's reputation. Recovering from email delivery issues on a root domain is considerably more difficult.
3. Organize and manage department-specific emails
You can create separate subdomains for different departments of the types of emails you will be sending. It is a great way to organize conversations and manage them effectively.
For example - you wouldn't want your sales emails to get mixed up with your complaints or helpline emails. Neither would you want to mix your transactional emails with your PR emails. It creates confusion and makes it even more difficult to track your efforts in one category.
When to use email subdomains
Depending on your email communication needs, you can consider setting up multiple subdomains for various purposes. This offers even more granular control.
1. Promotional emails
By isolating promotional emails on a dedicated subdomain, you protect the primary domain's reputation from potential deliverability issues tied to bulk email campaigns. Promotional emails, if flagged as spam or encountering high bounce rates, won't affect transactional or critical customer emails sent from the main domain.
2. Outreach and PR communications
Outreach and PR emails are often sent to unfamiliar recipients, and a higher proportion of them may be marked as spam, especially if your messaging is unsolicited. Keeping these emails on a separate subdomain helps prevent these emails from harming the sender reputation of your main domain.
3. Transactional emails
Transactional emails are essential for ongoing customer interactions (e.g., order confirmations, password resets). They typically have higher engagement rates, as they are expected and relevant to recipients. By using a separate subdomain for transactional emails, you ensure that their high engagement doesn’t get impacted by less successful email types.
Additionally, if a transactional email subdomain experiences deliverability problems, it won’t affect the marketing or support emails sent from other subdomains.
4. Customer support and complaint management:
Complaint-related emails are often time-sensitive and critical to customer satisfaction. If complaint emails share a subdomain with promotional or marketing emails, poor deliverability on one type can delay customer responses and damage your relationship with clients.
Isolating complaint emails ensures their quick delivery and prioritizes fast resolution of issues, leading to a better customer experience and less chance of being flagged by spam filters.
5. Newsletters
Newsletters generally have a more engaged audience and higher open rates than unsolicited emails. A dedicated subdomain for newsletters makes it easier to track engagement metrics, and if there are deliverability issues, they can be addressed without affecting other email types.
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How to set up a subdomain
Setting up a subdomain does not necessarily require buying a new domain, as you can create subdomains under an existing domain you already own. However, the process involves some key steps.
Step 1: Choose a domain registrar (If you do not have a domain yet)
To create a subdomain, you need to have a registered domain. If you don’t already have one, you will first need to purchase a domain through a registrar. Popular registrars include GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains, etc.
Once you have your domain, you can easily create subdomains under it.
If you already have a domain, you don’t need to buy a new one to create a subdomain; you can simply create the subdomain under your existing domain.
Step 2: Search for and purchase your domain
If you are setting up a new domain, use the domain search tool of the registrar to check if the domain name you want is available. Once you find an available domain, purchase it. You can then proceed to set up your subdomain.
Step 3: Set Up DNS records for your subdomain
Once you have your domain, you can create a subdomain by modifying the DNS records. You don’t need to buy a separate IP address or hosting server to create a subdomain—subdomains are created within the DNS settings of your domain. You will typically create a subdomain by adding a DNS record that points to a new location or server (or a specific function, such as for email), depending on your needs.
Most domain registrars provide a DNS management tool where you can easily add subdomains and modify the DNS records. For example, if you want "email.yourbusiness.com" as your subdomain, you would create an A record or CNAME record for "email" in your domain's DNS settings.
Step 4: Connect your subdomain with your email service provider
Once the subdomain is created and DNS records are set, you can link it to an email service provider (ESP), like Mailmodo. Connecting the subdomain to your ESP ensures that emails sent from that subdomain are tracked and managed properly, making your email campaigns more effective.
Mailmodo provides tools for managing and tracking subdomains, helping you ensure optimal email deliverability.
If you need any help setting it up, just book a call with one of our experts and they will guide you through the process.
4 best practices for using email subdomains
To fully leverage the benefits of email subdomains, it’s important to follow best practices. Here are five key strategies for optimizing their effectiveness:
1. Establish clear naming conventions
A well-defined naming convention is crucial for organization and consistency. Use clear, descriptive prefixes for each subdomain, such as "email," "promo," "support," or "news," depending on the purpose of the subdomain. For example, "email.yourbusiness.com" could be dedicated to marketing communications, while "support.yourbusiness.com" could handle customer service-related emails.
2. Separate subdomains by email type
Keep different types of emails (such as promotional, transactional, or outreach emails) separate by creating individual subdomains for each category. This approach helps protect your sender reputation by isolating the potential impact of one subdomain’s performance on the others. For example, using a dedicated subdomain for marketing emails can ensure that deliverability issues with marketing campaigns do not affect transactional emails (e.g., order confirmations or password resets).
3. Ensure consistent email authentication
For maximum deliverability and security, implement robust email authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for each subdomain. Consistency in these setups across all subdomains strengthens your email security, helping ISPs recognize your emails as legitimate and reducing the risk of them being marked as spam.
4. Regularly monitor and analyze performance
Track key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and spam complaints for each subdomain. This data provides valuable insights that can help you fine-tune your email strategies and address any issues promptly. Regular analysis allows you to identify underperforming areas and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Final takeaway
Incorporating email subdomains into your communication strategy can significantly enhance your email management practices. They provide a clear structure for organizing different types of emails, help protect your sender reputation, and improve email deliverability.
By following best practices for setting up and managing subdomains, businesses can optimize their email campaigns, enhance engagement, and safeguard their reputation in the long run. Whether you’re using subdomains for marketing, transactional, or support emails, their value in improving communication efficiency cannot be overstated.
