Almost 5 years ago (yes yes, an eternity)we have published a list of email domains sorted by destination! Just this morning, a client asked me the following question, and so I was happy to take this list out of the closet with a few adjustments!
What does a destination mean in email deliverability?
The email addresses of your customers are of the type :
- petitcarotte@hotmail.com
- chauddevant@live.com
- lapintaiseux@free.fr
- penteglissante@aliceadsl.fr
- ...and so on
You will notice that here we have 4 different areas, but we actually only have 2 destinations. Why? Because hotmail.com and live.com are both owned by Microsoft, and they are the same servers that deliver the emails. The same goes for free.fr and aliceadsl.fr which will be delivered to Free's servers.
We can get this information by looking up the DNS record of type MX (via MXtoolbox for example). For our examples, this gives :
- Hotmail.com - hotmail-com.olc.protection.outlook.com - 104.47.57.161
- Live.com - live-com.olc.protection.outlook.com - 104.47.56.161
- Free.fr - mx1.free.fr - 212.27.48.7
- Aliceadsl.fr - mx1.free.fr - 212.27.48.6
It is therefore clear to which "destination" these different areas belong.
What's the point?
There are two main use cases (but obviously others can be found) :
1. Target a specific destination
It is not uncommon for incidents of deliverability it is necessary to stop routing to certain destinations, reduce the volumes sent, or target only inactives to them.
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If you have a problem with Microsoft, it is not enough to change the quality of your mailings to hotmail.com. At least ten different areas will need to be considered (outlook.com, outlook.fr, live.com, live.fr...).
2. Have aggregate statistics by destination
When you want to monitor deliverabilityThe most important figures are the open rates per destination and the bounce rates per destination. Thanks to them, it is quite easy to detect a spamming (and therefore a drop in the opening rate on a destination while the other destinations remain stable) or a blockage (and therefore an increase in bounce rates to a given destination). In this context, you can immediately see the advantage of grouping these statistics by destination rather than by domain.
What about this file?
It is here:
License
The list of domains is published under license WTFPL By sending us suggestions via the comments, you agree that your contribution may be published under the license WTFPL.
Release note
- 0.1 - July 9, 2015 - Initial release - 80 domains listed
- 0.2 - April 7, 2016 - Update
- 0.3 - January 10, 2020 - Update
Collaboration!
Feel free to send us your contributions in the comments or in contacting us.
Photo by Matthew Smith on Unsplash
One Response
Thank you! I've been looking for a while. This will help me create a great routing plan for myself 🙂