Changing your Email Sending Domain or Brand

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Making changes to your subscriber-facing brand or domain is a great time to rethink your subscriber experience! Avoid the surprise of unsubscribes and complaints by communicating your brand change early and often. Here are some considerations.

• Change the “friendly from,” sending address or domain to a name that resonates with subscribers
• Make sure the new address is not too long so that it renders as expected in the inbox.
• Think about using subdomains to denote different mailstreams if appropriate.
• Let your subscribers know in advance that a change is on the horizon.
• Monitor closely your open, click, unsubscribe and complaint rates throughout the transition. It is common to see a drop in responsiveness or an increase in complaints or unsubscribes during the transition as members may not recognize your new brand immediately. They may complain, but if you let them know in advance, you will mitigate the risk.
  • Tell your subscribers early and often about the change leveraging your friendly from, subject line, website, message headers and pre-header text, footers, email preference center, etc. Provide a link in the content to explain the reasons for the change.
  • Encourage your subscribers to add your new address to their address book.
  • Leverage both brands simultaneously for a period of time to familiarize your subscribers (example subject line: NewDomain.com, formerly OldDomain.com.)
  • If you’re presently using a ‘no-reply’ address, reconsider! Invite replies, which drive positive engagement and will improve your sender reputation and inbox placement rates.
  • If you are announcing the change via an email to your entire lead database:
    • Consider a warming strategy and deploy the message over an extended period of time rather than in one batch. This will allow you to put your best foot forward (most engaged/active subscribers first followed by your lesser engaged, higher risk segments.) It will also allow you to manage your complaint rates and react to user feedback.
    • If you’re mailing to unengaged subscribers, actively review your bounces to ensure you are removing the unknown users swiftly. Work with Marketo’s deliverability team to ensure the Soft Bounce logic supports you well through this process.
  • Don’t forget the landing page! Create a compelling call to action encouraging your subscribers to click and leverage the landing page to reinforce the new brand messaging. This is another way to drive engagement and build positive reputation for your new domain.
• Finally…the technical specs. Don’t forget to update your authentication records to include the new brand/domain: SPF, DKIM, CNAMEs​, tracking links and landing pages​. If you're mailing from a Dedicated IP, you may also want to update the return-path domain branding. Reach out to your CSM for more info.