What is a custom tracking domain and why is it important?

What is a custom tracking domain and why is it important?

Find out more about Custom Tracking Domain and why should you use your own domain to track the links in your emails.

One of the basic features we offer is click tracking. To track those clicks, VMA Emailer rewrites the links in your emails. The rewritten links will briefly direct the user through our system so the "click" can be registered. The domain that we use to rewrite the links is what we call a "tracking domain". While we do have a default tracking domain that we can use to rewrite your links, we offer the ability to "white label" the tracking domain with your own domain.

Why should you use your own domain to track the links in your emails

1. With proper SPF, DKIM, and a Tracking domain setup, your email headers and links will be completely "white labeled". The recipient will not see any mention of VMA Emailer in your emails.

2. All the visible components of your emails such as the "View On The Web" and "Unsubscribe" tracking page URLs will use your domain and not VMA Emailers.

3. Using your own domain for points 1 and 2 mean that you can easily build your own sender reputation. Our default tracking domains are shared among many customers. Your email delivery could be affected by other senders using the shared tracking domain. So, using your own domain will help you build your own sender reputation which can result in better overall delivery of your emails. The white-labeled emails also give your recipients confidence that they are in fact receiving the email from you and not someone pretending to be you.

4. VMA Emailer's reputation monitoring guide system that is built into your account will automatically add 5 points to your score if you have this setup. While account reputation system is meant to be a guide only, this will add 5 points to it and help you maintain the 5-star rating.

5. It is easy to set up. Similar to setting up SPF and DKIM, you will need to make an entry in your domain's DNS Settings. If your domain, for example, was example.com then you could set up a tracking domain such as email.example.com or tracking.google.com. Once you have decided on a prefix you will need to add a new CNAME record to your domain's DNS settings for your chosen domain to point to api.elasticemail.com. By default, our system will look for "tracking" or "email". If you have decided to use something else, just contact our support staff to have them manually verify your record. Full domain verification and setup info is available here.

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