When you're doing email marketing, you need to decide what domain you want your marketing emails to be sent from.
Most people will want to send from their Primary Domain.
However when Email Marketing, you need to be very careful as it's very easy to accidentally get your Primary Domain blocked by companies such as Google and Microsoft.
If this happens, you won't be able to send emails to anyone hosted on their platforms.
There's 3 options for choosing the domain you will send Marketing Emails through:
- OPTION 1: PRIMARY DOMAIN
This is the domain that you and your team use to send emails with to clients, suppliers etc. It's usually yourcompany.com or similar.
- OPTION 2: A SUB-DOMAIN
This is a sub-domain of your Primary Domain. It could be something like reply.yourcompany.com or email.yourcompany.com (your choice).
- OPTION 3: ALTERNATIVE DOMAIN
This is a separate domain from your Primary Domain. This could be something like yourcompanyname.net (using the .net instead of a .com).
Here's some Pros and Cons of each Option:
PRIMARY DOMAIN | SUB-DOMAIN | ALTERNATE DOMAIN | |
Protects your Primary Domain | No | Yes | Yes |
Looks Good to Prospects | Yes | No | Yes |
Threaded Conversations | Yes - Hard | Yes - Easy | Yes - Easy |
Cost | $0 | $0 | ~$50 |
Here's a deeper explanation for each item:
PROTECTS YOUR PRIMARY DOMAIN
If you're not an expert in email marketing, it's easy to accidentally make a mistake that triggers email providers such as Google or Microsoft to completely blacklist your sending domain.
By using a Sub-Domain or an Alternate Domain for your Email Marketing, even if you accidentally make a mistake and get blacklisted, you won't affect your Primary Domain which you talk to your Clients and Suppliers with.
LOOKS GOOD TO PROSPECTS
If a prospect receives an email from you@yourcompany.com, it looks better than you@email.yourcompany.com
THREADED CONVERSATIONS
If you want to use the Threaded Conversations feature in Growably with a Primary Domain so that all replies from Prospects to your Marketing Emails are threaded back into Growably (as well as your Outlook Inbox), then you need to use your own Mailgun account, set your MX record to Mailgun and a Mailgun Route to send emails both to Growably AND Microsoft365 (this might break things like your Email Protection tools).
COST
This one is self-explanatory, it costs about ~$50 (or less) to register / renew a separate domain. But can be well worth it.
TL;DR - SUMMARY
Our recommendation is if you have deep expertise in email marketing and know how to avoid getting your primary domain blacklisted, then consider using your Primary Domain (but still be super careful).
If you're not an expert in Email Marketing, then use either Option 2 or Option 3 (at least until you do become an expert).