Last week I wrote about how to dodge the spam folder in 2025, which covered diagnosis and testing to determine why your emails are not getting into your audience’s inbox. If you’re stumbling on this blog and still trying to sort out the reason messages are going to spam, that piece is a better starting point. But if you have been through that and you’re confident you need a new domain, we’ll cover how to get that set up in today’s post. Note that this topic will very much be on the long end, so I am going to split it into two separate parts spread over two weeks.
Many people that do not have previous experience with server configuration will find some parts of this process to be technical. It’s not rocket science, but let me give you a sense of what is involved and the relative levels of difficulty:
- First, I’ll walk you through procuring a new domain; this part isn’t any harder than making an online shopping purchase.
- Second, I’ll talk about setting up new inboxes, which is also fairly straightforward.
- Third, I will go through how to configure that shiny new domain for sending email. This tends to be the most complex part.
- Finally, I will finish off with some guidelines on how to “warm up” those new inboxes. This isn’t complicated, but it can be tedious.
This post will be a balance of getting into enough detail you can take action, but staying broad enough to stay applicable to a couple of different variations that might apply to your situation. For instance, setting up an address to work with your new domain in Marketo or Campaign Monitor is different from setting up HubSpot. Luckily, many of the same underlying principles apply. If you do ultimately have questions about your particular setup feel free to book some time.
Before proceeding, a disclaimer: this process is not something you can expect to have completed and ready to go in a day. In fact, just purchasing a new domain and allowing for it to resolve will probably take a day or two alone. For the complete progression from start to finish I would typically budget a month from when you first purchase a new domain to the point it is safely ramped up to full (10,000+ recipients at a time) sending volume. It can happen faster, but doing so introduces risk of burning the domain and sending you back to square one.
Procuring a New Domain
Okay, first thing’s first. Let’s go buy ourselves a new domain. This is the easy part. Heck, some might even find it fun! You have a variety of options to choose from when it comes to domain registrars. For example, GoDaddy, Namecheap, and HostGator are a few of the more popular options. These all offer options to check on the availability of domain ideas you have, and they’re very good at suggesting alternatives if what you want isn’t up for purchase.
When selecting the actual domain there are a couple of best practices to keep in mind:
Keep it Relevant
A domain name that aligns with your brand but isn’t identical to your primary domain. For example, if your main domain is brand.com, consider brandemail.com or getbrand.com. Most of the time these will be easy to find and very affordable.
Stick to Trustworthy Extensions
Lean towards using standard domain extensions like .com or .net. These are familiar to users and less likely to raise red flags with spam filters. Extensions like .io and .ai are popular right now, too, but keep in mind we’re focusing on getting emails delivered to an inbox and not putting up a new website for a product.
When you’re ready to check out, one important point to keep in mind is that if your organization has the capacity to host domains, and it almost certainly does, you will not need to purchase hosting. That’s something to be careful of as a lot of domain registries are very talented at roping unsuspecting victims into purchasing add-ons they don’t need. If in doubt, you’re best to find someone on your R&D team to assist. Usually this will be a senior member like the CTO of VP of Engineering. You will very probably need them shortly, anyway.
As I mentioned above, once you’ve registered the domain you will typically want to allow 24-48 hours for it to resolve before moving on. It takes a little bit of time for changes in ownership to spread across the whole world wide web.
Setting up New Inboxes
Once the new domain has resolved we need to create (an) address(es) and (an) inbox(es). Most organizations I work with are using Google Workspace, but of course the other popular option is Microsoft 365. Luckily both Google and Microsoft offer detailed knowledge base resources to guide you through the process.
You will need to add the new domain to your organization’s workspace and verify it. Automated wizards that both Microsoft and Google provide serve as great aids through the process, but typically you will need to get IT involved to help. Changes to these settings require high level administrative access. Similarly, the verification component is where you will need someone, likely from R&D, that can create and edit DNS records using Amazon Route 53, or cPanel, or an equivalent service.
If you are in a smaller organization without a defined IT function I usually find that only one or both of the founding team members have the required administrative credentials to complete this process. If one of these is the CTO, go with them, because as you may have already discovered they will more than likely also be able to help with DNS configuration.
This is also a large part of why I think many organizations struggle to address issues with email deliverability. The process of resolving problems requires sound cross-functional collaboration, usually between a combination of marketing, operations, IT, and R&D. Achieving good communication and getting everyone speaking the same language can be challenging. It does not take much to spiral into a game of broken telephone, even at smaller companies. Plus, the perceived complexity of the process will often lead to ignoring issues or procrastinating on fixes.
I tend to coach clients that if they’re willing to jump the hurdles and cut through the noise, they can often get ahead of their competition and wield email as a very powerful channel for growth.
Once your new domain has been added and verified, creating and activating mailboxes is straightforward. However, there is a caveat. When working with secondary domains one can create dedicated mailboxes, or they can add email aliases attached to existing accounts using the primary domain. You will usually want to go with the former option and create dedicated addresses. If you have concerns about the mailbox being checked for replies, keep in mind most ESPs (email service providers) and MAPs (marketing automation platforms) will allow you to configure a separate “reply-to” address for exactly this purpose. This can also present a good opportunity to create a dedicated account for DMARC, which we will utilize in the next step.
Speaking of next steps, stay tuned for part 2 next week. I will be tackling configuring your new domain and warming up inboxes in the next post.