Email deliverability
Introduction
The following document will give you the latest information on recent changes in the technical landscape of emails, how this has affected email
deliverability, information about the use of subdomains and outlines Sopro’s recommended best practices.
Contents:
- Page 2 Email deliverability
- Page 4 Common FAQs
- Page 7 Glossary definitions
Email deliverability
Why Sopro leads the way
Sopro is not just a participant in the email prospecting space—we’ve been recognised leaders for a decade. Our team stays ahead of trends, drives and implements the latest industry practices, and uses proprietary tools that keep your email campaigns compliant, effective, and highly deliverable.
As email deliverability standards evolve, you can rest assured that we are continually optimising your campaigns to meet these challenges head-on.
Our expertise ensures that you stay ahead of competitors in reaching your target audiences, regardless of how stringent email provider rules become.
What’s new in email deliverability?
In April and June 2024, the major Email Service Providers including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo introduced technical updates that have significantly impacted email deliverability across the industry. After that time, our data began showing an increase in the importance of Domain Age when sending emails.
Right away, we started extensive testing, sending emails from:
- Older domains which had not previously sent a lot of emails
- Subdomains (as these inherit the age of the main domain)
- Using the main domain
- At the same time, we also implemented advanced monitoring of domain reputation for different email providers.
What does Sopro recommend?
Right now, the single biggest impact change our clients can make is switching to subdomains to send outreach emails. This has been extensively tested at Sopro and has shown a 40 – 80% increase in response rates across our internal campaigns.
We monitor subdomain reputation in the same way that we track domain reputation: using a combination of Google Postmaster tools, Spam feedback loops, and response rates. We send thousands of emails daily through Sopro subdomains, without any effect on the primary Sopro domain.
Sopro.io consistently has the highest possible reputation on both Google and Microsoft, and we observe the same strong performance for our clients using subdomains.
Why has Domain Age increased in importance?
Over the years, Email Service Providers have introduced measures to combat spam. These measures had the desired effect of reducing spam and phishing emails, as well as impacting low-quality prospecting.
In response, some providers of non-targeted bulk email campaigns have resorted to suggesting the use of 30 domains, with 10 mailboxes on each, to increase email volume. This short-term focus on quantity rather than quality has led to a surge in emails being sent from newer, lower-quality domains, worsening the issue and contributing to the growing emphasis on Domain Age.
Email deliverability is not something that can be manipulated. For sustainable long-term results, success will always come from sending high-quality content to the right audience in the right way.
Common FAQs
I’ve read that a subdomain reputation can impact my main domain reputation. Is this true?
At Sopro, we’ve always been at the forefront of email deliverability tech. Anything that could affect a client’s domain is rigorously tested and handled with the utmost care.
Our entire approach as an outreach partner is to foster long-term partnerships and success for our clients. This is why a key pillar of any Sopro campaign is to protect our client’s domain reputation so that we can achieve ongoing successful delivery.
We conduct significant and extensive testing on subdomain usage, running email volumes over 10 times higher than a standard client campaign. These tests consistently show no impact at all on the reputation of the main domain.
We track domain reputation with major providers and can see from their own system that separate reputations are assigned to the main domain and the subdomain.
The following results from Sopro’s internal campaigns also support the case for adopting subdomains:
| Standard domain | Subdomain | |
|---|---|---|
| Prospects engaged | 46,000 | 167,000 |
| Response rate | 1.02% | 1.77% |
| Lead rate | 0.63% | 1.02% |
Can I use a subdomain of a domain Sopro has set up?
In short, no. The benefits of using a subdomain are not tied to the fact that it inherently is a subdomain – the reasons are twofold:
- Domain Age. A subdomain has the same domain age as the main domain it is attached to, and email providers are increasingly considering new domains as having a poor reputation.
- Legitimacy. Users are typically very familiar with receiving prospecting emails. They are more likely to recognise those that come from the main domain or a subdomain of the company’s website- which drives a higher engagement rate.
I have an old domain that was bought at the same time as our main one (e.g., example.co.uk vs. example.com). Can we use that domain or a subdomain from it?
Yes absolutely.
As we’ve seen, Domain Age is one of the key factors. If you have an alternative domain that is not new (ideally two years or older), then we can use this to create subdomains.
I’m having trouble setting up the DNS. How do I do this?
The exact process of DNS differs across providers. There are two ways we can manage this:
- Delegate nameservers
This sounds technical, but essentially, it is telling your DNS to use our servers for the config for a subdomain. For example, email.[yourdomain].com points to our servers, but nothing else changes. We use several different configs on our side, optimised based on our testing, so this is always our preference. It also saves you from having to do any additional tasks. This access can be removed at any time.
- Manual adding of records
If you are not able to delegate access to a subdomain, then we can provide records to be added. This is more complex and time-consuming on your side, however it will sometimes be necessary.
DNS is complex. We’ve spent years working with it and are always happy to talk directly to providers or tech departments, techy to techy, to get any challenges resolved.
My DNS provider wants to charge me for setting up a subdomain, is this right?
DNS providers should not charge for changes, and in most cases will provide a control panel to do so. We are always happy to get a DNS expert from our team to talk to them directly.
Glossary definitions
What is a domain?
A domain is the web address that identifies where an email is coming from, similar to how a physical address works for mail. For example, in the email address info@example.com,” “example.com” is the domain. For this document, we’ll assume that example.com is the same as your main website address.
What is a subdomain?
A subdomain is a subset of a larger domain, used to organise and manage different sections of a website or email system. It appears before the main domain name, separated by a dot. For example, in “support.example.com,” “support” is the subdomain, while “example.com” is the main domain.
What does DNS mean?
DNS (Domain Name System) is a system that translates humanreadable domain names, like “example.com,” into IP addresses, which computers use to communicate with each other. It’s like the internet’s phone book, allowing users to access websites using easy-toremember names instead of complex numerical ddresses.
What is a DNS record?
A DNS record is a database entry that tells the DNS how to handle requests for a specific domain. There are different types of DNS records, each serving a specific purpose, such as directing email traffic, verifying domain ownership, or pointing to the correct web server. For example, an A record points a domain to an IP address, while an MX record directs email to the right server.