Deliverability: Harmonize the domain names of your emails? That is to say ?

published on 08/09/2014,

updated on 18/07/2023

We've been telling you for years that your reputation as a sender is no longer based solely on your IP address, but also on your domain name. This is nothing new.

Well, at the same time, let's face it, this domain name reputation thing is moving slowly. While some players are at the forefront of the field (did I hear "Gmail" in the back of the room?), others are not there yet, others are deliberately playing on balance (in fact they are all playing on balance) or blurring the lines to confuse everyone.

What about phishing?

Unfortunately for you, our friends the spammers (who adapt quickly) went fishing. Trying to pretend to be Paypal in order to extort a few bucks from you, they started to confuse you by using the domain name of the attacked sites, then got thrown out. To get around this, they started using slight variations of the domain name of the attacked sites ... then got thrown out. And so on, it's escalating.

The downside of this is that every time phishers have moved their pawns forward, the filters have reacted accordingly, catching some of the legitimate senders who didn't ask for it in their nets.

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For some time now, in order not to get caught in the net of the anti-phishing fight, it is therefore recommended to harmonize the use of your domain names.

Here are the domains that you should try to harmonize in your emails (in order of priority). Good to know, the basic domain is that of your website, it is the center of your identity:

The sending domain name, i.e. the "From:" field (possibly the "Sender:" field if you use it, but that's for the purists)
The domain name of your links (including the tracking that your sending platform could generate)
The domain that signs in your DKIM (I know, it's very technical)
The domain name of your "Return-Path" (this is the email address to which your bounces are sent) - For purists only

Finally, it is (fortunately) possible to use sub-domains of your main domain (it is even recommended in some situations).

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The author

Jonathan Loriaux

I've been involved in email marketing for over ten years, and my career path began on the technical side (email campaign integration) before moving on to sales (as an eCRM expert) and finally marketing consultancy. For the past 9 years, I've been the author of the Badsender.com blog. Emailing isn't just an expertise, it's truly become my passion, which is why Badsender is now my main activity, with the creation of an emailing consulting business linked to the site.

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6 responses

Guillaume Fleureau

11 years ago

Thank you for this article Jonathan. Sarbacane Desktop offers a feature that allows you to use your own domain or sub-domain to harmonize the sending domains and tracking links. We provide a procedure and support to help customers to configure authentication correctly. For those who do not want to or cannot use their own domain, we also offer directly in the tool to reserve a dedicated domain name for sending that will be automatically authenticated with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. The customer has nothing to do, Sarbacane takes care of everything!
Florian

11 years ago

A little tip for those who want to cover their tracks:
shoot with a domain name in from, dkim, return path and use a redirection with this same domain name to the real links, so that the webmail is happy, because everything coincides, and the marketing guy is also happy, because he scrambled the tracks, and if tomorrow there is an error that makes there is BL of the ndd, well ... it's a domain name all fake ^^

Of course Jonathan, if my message is problematic, please delete it, I don't have a problem with that, I just try to answer with little tricks to avoid being annoyed by webmails, we all agree that our goal is the same: to send our emails.

Of course, I take the liberty of giving this kind of tip, as I don't do phishing or anything, it's just that it's better to be safe than sorry and thus avoid plumbing the main ndd of the brand 🙂
Jonathan Loriaux

11 years ago

Florian,

Everyone has the right to say what they want here 😉

But between you and me, changing your domain name regularly is also a very good way to get shot. We know for example that the registration date of a domain name is an element of reputation, it is better to shoot with a domain name that is 5 years old rather than 5 days old. Not sure that this is a sustainable solution.

Better to have impeccable practices (harvest and permission wise) than to fall into endless tricks 😀
Florian

11 years ago

ah but having a fake name does not mean that we change it regularly, there are names that have been running for 2 years without any problem, but "just in case" we prefer to use the ndd "tutu.com" than the ndd of the brand, it's a protection measure that's all 🙂
Jonathan Loriaux

11 years ago

I know some who would have passed out long ago reading you 😉
f4b1

8 years ago

Thanks for the advice, I will try it on my mailings because I have some deliverability problems, I had never explored this harmonization.

I hope it will be positive, and by the way the comments are very informative, thanks again!