Dedicated vs. shared domains

There are two kinds of domains that emails can be sent from: shared and dedicated.

Emails sent from a shared domain show that your emails were sent via another domain. Emails sent from a dedicated domain, however, show that emails were sent from your brand’s domain. The example below shows what a recipient might see when an email comes from a shared domain vs. a dedicated domain.

With shared domains, mailbox providers (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Yahoo) look at both the “from” domain (“yourbrand.com” in the example above) and the shared domain (“marketing1.attentivemail.com” in the example above). When these two domains don’t match, it can count against your overall reputation and may hinder deliverability. Additionally, the reputation of a shared domain isn’t entirely in your control. When one sender on the shared domain receives a high number of spam complaints, deliverability for everyone using the shared domain is affected.

For these reasons, using a dedicated domain instead of a shared domain is considered industry best practice. Dedicated domains can bolster your brand’s overall email deliverability by improving the rate that your emails are delivered to subscriber inboxes, which increases opportunities for your subscribers to engage with your emails. They can also help insulate your brand’s email program from deliverability issues caused by another brand on a shared network. And finally, they provide a more consistent brand experience for your subscribers.

By default, you’ll need to set up a dedicated domain to send emails through Attentive. See Email settings to learn how to set up a dedicated domain. You’ll also need to warm up your domain in order to send email campaigns.

Keep in mind that setting up a dedicated domain with Attentive doesn’t affect your Attentive email reputation with any other email service provider (ESP), nor does it affect reporting or attribution at other ESPs. You’ll have a separate email reputation with each ESP you use.