Boost Your Email Deliverability with a Custom Tracking Domain (CTD)

Hello! 👋 

If you're looking to boost your email deliverability and improve your sender reputation, setting up a Custom Tracking Domain (CTD) is a game-changer. 

Let’s take a look at how setting up CTD can affect your domain.

👉Why Is a Custom Tracking Domain Important?

A Custom Tracking Domain (CTD) is crucial for improving email deliverability because:

• Domain Reputation Protection: When you send emails from a shared domain, other users’ bad practices (like high bounce rates or spam complaints) could affect your reputation. A CTD isolates your email sending reputation and ensures your domain remains untarnished.
• Better Spam Filter Avoidance: Email services like Gmail, Outlook, and others are more likely to trust emails sent from custom domains, boosting your chances of landing in the inbox.
• Professionalism: A CTD makes your email outreach look more professional and credible to recipients, as they’ll see your own domain rather than a generic one.

👉Step-by-Step Guide to Set Up Your Custom Tracking Domain

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1. Create a Subdomain on Your Domain Provider

First things first, you’ll need to create a sub-domain that you’ll use for your CTD. This involves editing the DNS records of your domain.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Access Your DNS Settings: Log into your domain provider account (like GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, etc.). You’ll need administrator access to make these changes, so you may need to ask your dev team for help. 🤓
2. Navigate to DNS Records: Find the DNS section (it might be labeled as "DNS Management" or "DNS Settings"). Once you're there, click to add a new DNS record.
3. Fill Out the Required Fields: You’ll need to add the following details provided in lemwarm:

• Type: Choose CNAME (this tells the DNS that you’re creating a canonical name).
• Name (or Host): Enter the name provided by lemwarm, like “trail”, “route”, or “lemtrail”.
• Hostname (or Value/Points to): Enter “custom.lemlist.com” (with the period at the end if accepted, or remove it if not).

4. Set DNS Proxy (Cloudflare users): If you're using Cloudflare, after setting up your CNAME record, ensure it’s set to DNS proxy only (click the orange cloud icon) rather than HTTP and DNS.
   This is how it should look in Cloudflare:

2. Verify Your Custom Tracking Domain

Once you’ve completed the DNS setup, it’s time to double-check that everything’s working properly:

• If you’ve created a subdomain like "trail" for the domain lovelemwarm.com, your CTD should look like this: trail.lovelemwarm.com.
• Copy and paste your trail.yourdomain.com URL into your browser.
  
  • If everything is set up correctly, you should see a confirmation message (like “Custom Tracking Domain is active”).

• If you don’t see the message, it means there’s an issue with your setup, and you’ll need to double-check your DNS configuration.

Once you see the success message, the hard part is done! 🎉

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3. Add Your Custom Tracking Domain in Lemwarm

Now that your CTD is ready, it’s time to integrate it with lemwarm:

1. Go to lemwarm Settings: In your lemwarm dashboard, navigate to Account Settings and find the Sending settings section.

2. Enter Your CTD: Add your newly created subdomain (e.g., trail.lovelemlist.com) into the appropriate field. (You can also click on “Configure manually” and then add it in the field bellow)

• If you're part of a team, you can apply this CTD across your whole team by going to Team Settings.

3. Verify Connection: lemwarm will automatically check your DNS records to confirm everything is in place.

If the setup doesn’t work immediately, don’t worry—it can take up to 72 hours for DNS changes to propagate across the internet. Set a reminder to come back and check after 3 days.

If you still encounter issues, you can reach out to your host support to make sure the DNS settings are correctly configured on their side. lemwarm cannot check their backend, so contacting support will help.

👉What Happens Next?

Once your Custom Tracking Domain (CTD) is set up and verified, lemwarm will start using it to send your warm-up emails. This will:

• Boost your email deliverability.
• Protect your sender reputation.
• Help ensure your emails are delivered to the inbox, not the spam folder.

With your CTD in place, you'll have more control over your email outreach and can trust that lemwarm will use the best practices for deliverability.

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Conclusion

Setting up a Custom Tracking Domain (CTD) is an essential step for improving your email deliverability, protecting your domain’s reputation, and ensuring your outreach emails are sent from a trusted domain. By following these simple steps, you’ll be able to take full advantage of lemwarm’s capabilities and start seeing better results in your email campaigns.

If you run into any issues or need further assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team. We’re here to help you succeed! ✨

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