Use your domain in email tracking links
When you send out an email with Platformly, or any other ESP, you will notice that our domain is used to track link clicks and opens of your emails. If you want to use your domain(s) this video and guide will show you how to do it:
Summary:
Step 1) add a subdomain for email tracking inside your 'Domains' section under 'Setup'
Step 2) Add the CNAME to your domain via your DNS provider
Step 3) Select that domain on the sender profiles you want using it (under 'setup' also)
Step 4) That's it! Mails will now use your domains added to that sender profile
Transcript:
00:01 Okay. Welcome to this quick update video explaining about a cool, new feature that we've just added into your custom domain setup. Previously, when you add a custom domain, you can use it as a tracking sub domain, which means that all the tracking links that you can create could be ... For example, you.join.us.ws, or, you know your domain name. Go.domain.com. The landing page sub domain that your, landing pages are built on.
00:30 When you're building pages, you could set that one as well. LP.domain.com, or pages, or whatever you wanted there, as well. Now, a third option that we've just added is the email sub domain. This allows you to full control your email sending reputation for the, in the body content, which means that ... Also I guess, another benefit is that when people hover over the link, instead of seeing our links, like what you get with many of the other providers, which you can still leave if you don't add custom domain or list a sub domain. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
01:09 If you did wanna have your own domain name showing there, for the email tracking, for both the opens, the pixels, it uses your domain and also for the link cloaking and the tracking, which uses your domain. It says here, in order to add this email sub domain, delete this domain and re-add it again. Okay? To get this added in here, so you just add it exactly like this. If we were to use this domain here for example, we would just do this and we'd click delete. Okay. We'll remember it's you and www, because if we use the same ones, so that it doesn't break our tracking links, if you're editing one.
01:48 For tracking, we were using you and for this one we're using www. And then, for email, you use email. I don't recommend using mail.domain. I recommend using email. Okay? This was join us.ws. Okay. The reason not to use mail, is because, often that's like your mailbox accounts. You can use email. Or go, or click, or whatever you want in there. Okay. And then, all we're going to is we're going to go through and we're going to follow these steps again, which you've probably done if you've added a custom domain already. If you haven't, you'll be able to see how you can do that in here, okay? This is where we're gonna point to them. I'll quickly show you how to do that right now.
02:36 Okay, so I'm in my CloudFlare account, but I have this domain hosted. I'm managing the DNS here. If you use Go Daddy, Name Cheap or whatever for your domains, and you just have it sitting in the account, you can just go and use the DNS managers inside those. What we're going to do here, is we're going to add a CNAME. Okay. And then the name which we chose was EMAIL.
02:57 And then, the location I wanted to point to. You're just gonna come back here. EMAIL is our name and we wanted to go to www.plypark.com. Just gonna paste that in there. We're gonna add the record, and you'll see that it's here now as well. You can see these, the other two that we added previously. They're pointing back as they should, so we're not gonna change those. If we come back here, and then we click add domain.
03:21 Now, it says you can wait one hour, up to 24 hours for it to refresh. Right. As you can see it happened kind of instantly here. It's all connected up. The second step now that we've added it in, and obviously you can do it for your other domains, or the new domains that you add as well, if you got a new domain. It'll be the same story. You paste in the domain, select these three here with the names you want and set up the CNAME's. It's as simple as that.
03:45 What we can do now, is then we wanna add those to our sender profiles. Okay? We're gonna go over to sender profile. You're gonna choose the one with the domain that you sent for. Normally, you would use your custom domain as well, potentially for the from, email and reply to. In this case, we're going to be using, from here you'll see that it has the different option over here. Okay. We can use email.join.us. You then select that as the custom domain and now what it's busy doing is it's, busy actually checking these domain names, to make sure that they are not on any black lists and all these kinds of things.
04:24 Yes, that's come back as all good, so then we just click confirm and save. And now, let's go and test it out. Okay. We'll just select any email here. It's gonna send it to the one contact. Okay. You will check that it's got links in it, so I can show you those when it arrives, which it does. And then, obviously here we're gonna choose the same sender profile that we updated, the links on the custom domain, so it's gonna include that. I'm just gonna click save and send. And then we should get that email. I'll go and load up my inbox now and then open that email.
04:59 Okay. The email just came in. I resized the window a little, bit. You can see if you look down the bottom left of the window. When I hover, you'll see email.joinus.ws. That would be email or go, or click.yourdomain.com. Whatever domain you set as your custom set in there, including the pixel code as well. All right? It's got all of that in there. All links, even to Facebook for example and so on. That's how you can go ahead and set that up. That's how the email sub domain process works. Thank you.
Summary:
Step 1) add a subdomain for email tracking inside your 'Domains' section under 'Setup'
Step 2) Add the CNAME to your domain via your DNS provider
Step 3) Select that domain on the sender profiles you want using it (under 'setup' also)
Step 4) That's it! Mails will now use your domains added to that sender profile
Transcript:
00:01 Okay. Welcome to this quick update video explaining about a cool, new feature that we've just added into your custom domain setup. Previously, when you add a custom domain, you can use it as a tracking sub domain, which means that all the tracking links that you can create could be ... For example, you.join.us.ws, or, you know your domain name. Go.domain.com. The landing page sub domain that your, landing pages are built on.
00:30 When you're building pages, you could set that one as well. LP.domain.com, or pages, or whatever you wanted there, as well. Now, a third option that we've just added is the email sub domain. This allows you to full control your email sending reputation for the, in the body content, which means that ... Also I guess, another benefit is that when people hover over the link, instead of seeing our links, like what you get with many of the other providers, which you can still leave if you don't add custom domain or list a sub domain. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
01:09 If you did wanna have your own domain name showing there, for the email tracking, for both the opens, the pixels, it uses your domain and also for the link cloaking and the tracking, which uses your domain. It says here, in order to add this email sub domain, delete this domain and re-add it again. Okay? To get this added in here, so you just add it exactly like this. If we were to use this domain here for example, we would just do this and we'd click delete. Okay. We'll remember it's you and www, because if we use the same ones, so that it doesn't break our tracking links, if you're editing one.
01:48 For tracking, we were using you and for this one we're using www. And then, for email, you use email. I don't recommend using mail.domain. I recommend using email. Okay? This was join us.ws. Okay. The reason not to use mail, is because, often that's like your mailbox accounts. You can use email. Or go, or click, or whatever you want in there. Okay. And then, all we're going to is we're going to go through and we're going to follow these steps again, which you've probably done if you've added a custom domain already. If you haven't, you'll be able to see how you can do that in here, okay? This is where we're gonna point to them. I'll quickly show you how to do that right now.
02:36 Okay, so I'm in my CloudFlare account, but I have this domain hosted. I'm managing the DNS here. If you use Go Daddy, Name Cheap or whatever for your domains, and you just have it sitting in the account, you can just go and use the DNS managers inside those. What we're going to do here, is we're going to add a CNAME. Okay. And then the name which we chose was EMAIL.
02:57 And then, the location I wanted to point to. You're just gonna come back here. EMAIL is our name and we wanted to go to www.plypark.com. Just gonna paste that in there. We're gonna add the record, and you'll see that it's here now as well. You can see these, the other two that we added previously. They're pointing back as they should, so we're not gonna change those. If we come back here, and then we click add domain.
03:21 Now, it says you can wait one hour, up to 24 hours for it to refresh. Right. As you can see it happened kind of instantly here. It's all connected up. The second step now that we've added it in, and obviously you can do it for your other domains, or the new domains that you add as well, if you got a new domain. It'll be the same story. You paste in the domain, select these three here with the names you want and set up the CNAME's. It's as simple as that.
03:45 What we can do now, is then we wanna add those to our sender profiles. Okay? We're gonna go over to sender profile. You're gonna choose the one with the domain that you sent for. Normally, you would use your custom domain as well, potentially for the from, email and reply to. In this case, we're going to be using, from here you'll see that it has the different option over here. Okay. We can use email.join.us. You then select that as the custom domain and now what it's busy doing is it's, busy actually checking these domain names, to make sure that they are not on any black lists and all these kinds of things.
04:24 Yes, that's come back as all good, so then we just click confirm and save. And now, let's go and test it out. Okay. We'll just select any email here. It's gonna send it to the one contact. Okay. You will check that it's got links in it, so I can show you those when it arrives, which it does. And then, obviously here we're gonna choose the same sender profile that we updated, the links on the custom domain, so it's gonna include that. I'm just gonna click save and send. And then we should get that email. I'll go and load up my inbox now and then open that email.
04:59 Okay. The email just came in. I resized the window a little, bit. You can see if you look down the bottom left of the window. When I hover, you'll see email.joinus.ws. That would be email or go, or click.yourdomain.com. Whatever domain you set as your custom set in there, including the pixel code as well. All right? It's got all of that in there. All links, even to Facebook for example and so on. That's how you can go ahead and set that up. That's how the email sub domain process works. Thank you.
Updated on: 02/08/2019
Thank you!