Using secondary domains is one of the most popular tactics in cold email marketing. As a beginner, it can be confusing why everybody’s talking about secondary domains.
In this article, I will cover
What are secondary domains
Why secondary domains in cold email marketing
How many secondary domains you should get
What are Secondary Domains
Secondary domains are additional domain names that a business or individual gets to complement their main domain. These domains are often used for various purposes, including cold email marketing, brand protection, or redirecting traffic to the main website.
For example, our primary domain is smartlead.ai, but our secondary domains are:
smartleadgrowth.info
smartleadinfo.co
smarterleaderemails.co
Why Secondary Domains in Cold Email Marketing
Secondary domains are essential in cold email marketing to:
Divide the email sending load.
Improve deliverability.
Protect the primary domain's reputation.
Prevent the primary domain from being blacklisted.
For instance, when sending 1000 emails daily, it's advisable to split them into batches—max 50 emails per address.
However, creating 20 email addresses under your primary domain isn't recommended. Instead, a best practice is to purchase secondary domains and generate 2-3 addresses from each.
To send 1000 emails, you'd require approximately 7 secondary domains.
Where to Buy Secondary Domains
When buying secondary domains for cold emailing, consider factors like price fluctuations upon renewal, registration duration, domain transfer ease, expiration policies, and additional services like hosting and privacy protection.
Some of the best Domain Sellers are:
GoDaddy
Bluehost
Hostinger
Domain.com
We use GoDaddy, and recommend the same.
What Secondary Domains Should You Buy
When choosing secondary domains for cold email marketing, opt for those closely related to your primary domain, preferably using top-level domains like .com, .de, .in, or .be.
Avoid extensions like .biz or .online, as they tend to perform poorly.
For instance, if your primary domain is "clothing.com," consider secondary domains like "fitclothing.com" or "clothing.de" for better results.
Don’t buy secondary domains like clothing.biz, clothing.online, etc.
Never buy secondary domains with numbers or hyphens.
How to Connect Secondary Domain with Smartlead
To connect a secondary domain with Smartlead, you need to set up custom domain tracking. Here's how you can do it:
Open your domain management tool (e.g., Godaddy, Namecheap).
Go to the DNS management section.
In your Host Records section, add a CNAME with the following:
Type: CNAME Record
Host: emailtracking
Value: open.sleadtrack.com
TTL: Automatic
Wait for 30 mins to 24 hours for changes to take effect.
Go to your Smartlead app and paste the full URL in this format: http://{host}.{yourdomain}.
Click on "Verify CNAME."
That's it!
To learn how to add bulk email accounts to Smartlead app, check this out. Contact our customer support team if you need any further technical assistance.