When sending email campaigns / sequences, if you can see your opening rate and click rate, it means tracking is added in your emails.

When you use an email automation tool for your campaigns, by default your emails are sent with a tracking pixel / URL inside the body (in the HTML).

This tracking allows you to know and monitor your opening rate and click rate. And, of course, that’s useful to check the results of your campaigns.

This tracking code is always associated to a domain / URL.

By default, the tracking domain added in your email is the same as the other users of your email automation tool. And that's the problem.

By default, the emails you send contain the same tracking domain as the other customers of your email automation tool. It means you're sharing a domain / URL with a lot of other people and businesses using this tool.

The problem is this : if you don’t set up your own custom tracking domain, your emails will be associated to all the customers of your sending tool who did not set up their own custom tracking domain.

It simply means that if you have the same tracking domain as potential big spammers your emails can be identified as spam.

You don’t want to be infected by the bad behavior of others.

By setting up a custom tracking domain, you isolate and protect yourself from others and build your own sending reputation.

Most email automation services allow you to set up your own tracking domain. But sometimes, they use another name to describe that : link branding, branded links, etc.

To find the place where to set it up in your email automation tool :

Go on Google and type : " [your campaigns tool name] custom tracking domain " . Example : sendgrid custom tracking domain
Check in the documentation / helpdesk
Ask them in the support.

If they don’t allow it, switch to another sending service. That means they're likely to suck at deliverability.

Important : as your custom tracking domain, use the domain of the sending address.

To have the most coherent behavior, set up as your custom tracking domain, the one that's sending the emails.

That means that if you send from marie@mygreatdomain.com, set up mygreatdomain.com as your custom tracking domain.

Conclusion: the custom tracking domain is an absolute MUST HAVE.

No debate on this. Just do it.

Updated on: 28/04/2022