Email Domain Configuration

Using your own domains when sending emails is a great way to improve deliverability of your emails and to look more professional with your own sender address.

There are three types of domains that are used when sending an email:

• Email Domains are used to physically send your outgoing emails.
• Tracking Domains are used for tracking links contained in your emails.
• CDN Domains are used for hosting any images or media contained in your emails.

What is an Email Domain?

An Email Domain is the domain that Transpond physically sends the emails from. By default Transpond emails are sent from one of the generic Transpond domains. 

This is done because mail servers expect emails to come from domains that have had specific DNS records setup, telling them that it's ok for the emails to be sent from this mail server.

If these DNS records are missing the emails are very likely to be rejected by the recipient mail server.

For someone receiving an email sent using a generic mail server they’ll see something like this:

If you want the email to be fully sent from your own domain then you need to configure Transpond to use your own domain instead. 

How to setup an Email Domain

Note: You need to have access to your domain name's DNS records before proceeding. If you don't you may need to ask the person who registered your domain to do this bit for you.

If you’d like to send your Transpond emails using your own domain then you can set that up by following these steps:

1. Click on your profile picture in the top menu bar > Company Profile.
2. Go to the My Domains tab.
3. Click the button to Add & Verify a Domain.
4. Enter your email address for that domain and press the button to Continue.
5. The domain will be added but it’s not yet verified. Transpond will send an email to that address with a link for you to use to verify the domain.
6. Check your inbox and click the verification link.
7. At this point you’ll be directed back to the ‘My Domains’ page in your Transpond account and the domain will be verified for Sending Campaigns using your domain.
8. Next you need to Authenticate the domain so that emails sent through Transpond will look like they’re coming from your domain. Click the button to Authenticate under your domain entry.
9. You’ll now be presented with two things that you need to enter in your domain’s DNS settings - a DKIM entry and an SPF entry.
10. Login to your domain and follow the instructions to create a CNAME and TXT record and press Continue. We have a dedicated page on how to update DNS settings for popular DNS providers.

At this point Transpond will confirm these records with your domain provider. It might take up to 48 hours for the changes to take effect on your domain so if you get a message saying ‘DKIM Record not Found’ or ‘SPF Record not Found’ then please wait 48 hours and try again.

There’s already an existing SPF record

If you already have an SPF record in your domain setup (you can tell because the value will start with v=spf1) then you will need to update this record and not create a new one.

If you need to update an existing SPF record, simply edit the value and insert "include:spf.ourmailsender.com" after all of the other entries but BEFORE the last characters (usually ?all or ~all).

So for example in this SPF record example you would insert our value here: 

v=spf1 include: someservers.com include:spf.ourmailsender.com ?all

What is a Tracking Domain?

When a recipient clicks a link in a campaign email, they are briefly directed to one of our servers which tracks the link and then forwards them on to the correct page. This is how you get things like click rates in your email analytics. 

By default, Transpond uses it’s own domains to track links. Just like with the Email Domains mentioned above you can use your own domain for these tracking links. This is a great way to ensure maximum deliverability and inboxing.

How to setup a Tracking Domain

1. Click on your profile picture in the top menu bar > Company Profile.
2. Go to the My Domains tab.
3. Under the heading to 'Improve Email Deliverability', use the option to Add Tracking Domain.
4. Now enter the subdomain you would like to use for your tracking domain. Usually, people would use a subdomain here, so for example if your domain is acme.com you might use tracking.acme.com for the tracking domain.
5. In this same step you’ll see a note of the CNAME record you need to add to your DNS record. Please refer to our guide on adding DNS records in all of the most popular domain provider control panels.
6. Click Continue to finish the process.

At this point the tracking domain might not be authenticated yet. It can take up to 48 hours for the DNS changes to reach Transpond. When that happens the tracking domain will say that it’s authenticated and you can start using it.

What is a CDN Domain?

If you add images to your emails by uploading to our servers, when a customer receives this email they will be downloading the image from our server via a CDN domain.

As with tracking and email domains above, we use one of our own domains which are pointed at our image hosting servers in each email you send. However, using a shared domain can cause issues if another of our customers ends up causing the domain to be blocklisted.

This is rare but if it does happen it can cause issues with your own campaigns reaching your subscribers so the best way to ensure your emails always get delivered is to point your own domain at our image hosting (CDN) servers.

How to setup a CDN Domain

1. Click on your profile picture in the top menu bar > Company Profile.
2. Go to the My Domains tab.
3. Under the heading to 'Improve Email Deliverability', use the option to Add CDN Domain.
4. Now enter the subdomain you would like to use for your tracking domain. Usually, people would use a subdomain here, so for example if your domain is acme.com you might use cdn.acme.com for the tracking domain.
5. In this same step you’ll see a note of the CNAME record you need to add to your DNS record. Please refer to our guide on adding DNS records in all of the most popular domain provider control panels.
6. Click Continue to finish the process.

At this point the CDN domain might not be authenticated yet. It can take up to 48 hours for the DNS changes to reach Transpond. At that point the CDN domain will say that it’s authenticated and you can start using it.

What is a CAA record?

A CAA record stands for "Certification Authority Authorization" and lists which domains are allowed to generate SSL certificates for your domain. We generate SSL certificates on your custom CDN and tracking domains as it can help deliverability.

We use letsencrypt.org to generate our SSL certificates. If your domain has a CAA record you will need to ensure "letsencrypt.org" is added to your CAA record, speak to the person who maintains your domain about how to do this. For more information on letsencrypt CAA records please refer to their support documentation.

We will warn you if you try and add a domain that has a CAA record that is not compatible. Most domains do not have a CAA record which is normal, it's an advanced security feature most domains do not need.

SSL Records for domains

If you have a paid Transpond subscription you will notice the domain now says "SSL Pending". As part of our service to paid subscribers, Transpond automatically generates SSL records for all domains added. 

This process can take up to 1 hour until this SSL record changes to Completed.