Summary
When managing email deliverability, a common question arises: should transactional emails and marketing emails be sent from separate IP addresses or domains? The consensus among deliverability experts, marketers, and technical documentation strongly suggests that separating these email streams is a best practice. This approach helps to safeguard the critical deliverability of transactional emails from the potential reputation risks associated with marketing campaigns. By segmenting your sending infrastructure, you can better manage and protect the reputation of each email type, ensuring that essential messages, like password resets or order confirmations, reach the inbox consistently.
Key findings
- Reputation separation: Using separate IP addresses and subdomains for transactional and marketing emails allows for distinct reputation management. This means that if marketing emails encounter deliverability issues (e.g., high spam complaints), they are less likely to negatively impact the delivery of vital transactional messages.
- Engagement differences: Transactional emails typically have higher engagement rates, lower spam complaints, and fewer bounces compared to marketing emails. This consistent positive engagement builds a strong reputation, which should be protected by not mixing it with potentially lower engagement marketing sends.
- Domain and IP reputation: Both IP and domain reputation are crucial for deliverability. Separating these ensures that a poor reputation on one (e.g., a marketing IP or subdomain) doesn't drag down the other (e.g., a transactional IP or main domain). For more on managing your sender identity, read our guide on choosing an email sending domain.
- Protection from blocklists: If a marketing IP or domain gets placed on a blacklist (or blocklist) due to issues like spam traps or high complaint rates, your transactional emails sent from a separate, clean IP or domain will remain unaffected. This is critical for business continuity.
- Authentication impact: Proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is essential for all email types. Separating sending streams makes it easier to configure and maintain these records appropriately for each sender type, contributing to better deliverability. Learn more about DMARC, SPF, and DKIM.
Key considerations
- Volume and budget: While separation is ideal, smaller senders with low volumes for both types might find it less critical or cost-prohibitive to maintain multiple dedicated IPs. However, using subdomains is a highly recommended and cost-effective way to achieve domain separation.
- Subdomain strategy: Even if a dedicated IP for each stream isn't feasible, using separate subdomains (e.g., transactional.yourdomain.com and marketing.yourdomain.com) is crucial for isolating domain reputation. This provides significant protection against negative impacts. Explore why to use subdomains for email marketing deliverability.
- Monitoring: Regardless of your setup, continuous monitoring of your IP and domain reputation is vital. Tools and services can help track deliverability metrics, blacklist status, and sender reputation, allowing for proactive intervention if issues arise. You can use a dedicated IP address for transactional emails, according to DANAconnect.
- Complexity management: While separation adds a layer of management, the benefits for deliverability often outweigh the complexity. Many email service providers (ESPs) offer features to facilitate this segmentation, making it easier to implement.
What email marketers say
Email marketers often grapple with the practical implications of managing different email streams. The primary concern is typically how promotional email performance, which can be inconsistent, might affect the deliverability of essential transactional messages. Many marketers recognize the value of separating these sending types to protect their brand’s ability to communicate critical information reliably, even if it adds a layer of operational complexity.
Key opinions
- Protecting transactional emails: Marketers emphasize that transactional emails are critical for user experience and business operations. Therefore, any strategy that protects their deliverability from the volatility of marketing campaigns is highly valued.
- Impact of negative engagement: There's a clear understanding that marketing emails are more prone to higher spam complaints or lower engagement, which can damage sender reputation. Marketers want to avoid this impacting their core communications.
- Subdomain as a solution: Many marketers consider using subdomains (e.g., marketing.yourdomain.com) a legitimate and effective way to segregate email types without needing entirely new domains or IPs, especially for lower-volume senders. This aligns with advice on using a subdomain or main domain for marketing emails.
- Perceived complexity: Some marketers express concern about the added complexity of managing separate IPs or domains, especially if they are new to advanced deliverability concepts like how transactional emails impact marketing deliverability.
Key considerations
- Current reputation: If a marketing email program has already negatively impacted sender reputation, marketers should consider if a new domain or IP is necessary to isolate transactional mail and rebuild trust with mailbox providers.
- Cost vs. benefit: While dedicated IPs can come at a cost, the potential damage from poor deliverability of transactional emails often outweighs this expense, making it a worthwhile investment for many businesses.
- Long-term strategy: Implementing separation early on can prevent future deliverability crises and establish a more robust email program from the outset. Mailgun suggests that subdomains separate domain reputations.
- Engagement metrics: Marketers need to understand that transactional emails naturally garner better engagement. Leveraging this inherent advantage requires isolating them from bulk sends where engagement varies more widely.
Marketer view
Email marketer from Email Geeks explains that they are considering investing in a separate IP if their marketing emails have already negatively impacted their sender reputation. They are weighing this against simply adding a new domain for transactional emails.
Marketer view
Email marketer from Email Geeks confirms that they have never heard of 'IP splitting' previously. They were under the impression that using a single IP for all email types was the standard practice.
What the experts say
Deliverability experts consistently underscore the importance of isolating transactional and marketing email streams. Their insights often focus on the technical nuances of how mailbox providers assess sender reputation, emphasizing that the distinct sending patterns and engagement metrics of these email types necessitate separate management to optimize deliverability for both, especially for the high-priority transactional communications.
Key opinions
- Holistic reputation tracking: Experts highlight that mailbox providers track reputation on various levels, including IP and domain (or subdomain). Therefore, a comprehensive separation strategy should address both, as mentioned by an Email Geeks expert about IP and domain reputationtracked by Twilio.
- Transactional engagement superiority: There's a strong consensus that transactional emails inherently boast better engagement metrics, such as lower spam complaints and bounce rates. This superior performance translates into a higher sender reputation that must be preserved.
- IP and subdomain segmentation: IP splitting (sending different mail streams from different IPs) combined with subdomain segmentation is a recommended practice to achieve robust separation and reputation protection. This is key to preventing marketing issues from affecting critical transactional mail. For example, explore how subdomains affect primary domain reputation.
- Importance of authentication: Proper authentication, including SPF and DKIM, for all separated domains and subdomains is critical. Mailbox providers assess hundreds of factors in their reputation systems, and strong authentication signals trust.
- Preventing reputation contagion: Experts highlight that mixing high-reputation transactional emails with variable-reputation marketing emails on the same IP or domain risks getting your IP blocklisted, leading to deliverability issues for all mail types.
Key considerations
- Managed vs. unmanaged IPs: For those with dedicated IPs through an ESP, the question of adding another IP or a new domain is about optimizing existing infrastructure for best practices, rather than starting from scratch.
- Granular reputation factors: Deliverability isn't just about IP and domain. Experts suggest considering other factors like link domain and DKIM selectors, which also contribute to overall sender reputation.
- Avoiding confusion: The term "IP splitting" or "IP segmentation" might not be universally recognized, but the underlying concept of using separate IPs for different mail streams is standard deliverability advice.
- Proactive approach: It's always better to implement separation as a proactive measure rather than a reactive fix after deliverability problems arise. This ensures consistent performance for critical email types, especially transactional messages. Word to the Wise explains the importance of protecting your domain reputation.
Expert view
Email expert from Email Geeks states that deliverability can manifest in many forms, meaning the answer to whether it applies differently across email types from the same IP/domain is both yes and no. They clarify that reputation is tracked in various ways, including IP and domain reputation.
Expert view
Email expert from Email Geeks explains that IP reputation is based on the sending system and is typically shared across all domains and senders on that IP. Domain reputation, however, can be tied to a single domain, a subdomain, or even multiple subdomains.
What the documentation says
Email deliverability documentation and official best practice guides consistently advocate for the separation of transactional and marketing email streams. This recommendation stems from a deep understanding of how Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mailbox providers evaluate sender reputation. By maintaining distinct sending identities for different email types, organizations can proactively manage their deliverability, ensuring that critical communications are not compromised by the performance of bulk marketing sends.
Key findings
- Distinct sender reputation: Documentation emphasizes that different email types (transactional vs. marketing) should build and maintain their own sender reputations. This segregation prevents one type from negatively affecting the other, especially if one experiences deliverability challenges.
- Mitigating risk: Separating email streams helps mitigate the risk of transactional emails being blocked or sent to the spam folder if marketing emails receive high complaint rates or land on blocklists. This is a crucial protective measure.
- Subdomain best practices: Official guides frequently recommend using subdomains (e.g., mail.yourdomain.com for marketing, alerts.yourdomain.com for transactional) to achieve domain separation effectively and manage specific sending purposes.
- IP address pools: Many best practices suggest using separate IP address pools: one for high-priority, high-engagement transactional emails, and another for bulk marketing sends, optimizing the deliverability characteristics of each.
Key considerations
- Maintain strong authentication: For each separate IP and domain/subdomain, ensuring proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configuration is paramount. This robust authentication is a fundamental building block for trusted sending, as SMTP.com confirms.
- Monitoring is key: Even with separation, continuous monitoring of deliverability metrics for each stream is necessary. This includes tracking inbox placement, bounce rates, and complaint rates to quickly identify and address issues. Official documentation consistently advises this.
- Impact on deliverability: Documentation often points out that if transactional and promotional emails are not separated correctly, the promotional sending might adversely affect the deliverability of more critical transactional messages, leading to business disruption.
- Reputation consistency: Separating mail categories, such as transactional and marketing, ensures that each builds its own consistent reputation with mailbox providers, protecting the higher reputation of transactional mail from the varied performance of marketing campaigns. SAP Community advises on separating transactional and marketing subdomains.
Technical article
Email deliverability best practices documentation by Mailgun emphasizes that using subdomains for marketing and transactional emails facilitates the separation of their respective domain reputations. This separation is crucial for ensuring that the reputation of one email stream does not negatively influence the other.
Technical article
DANAconnect's guide on IP address best practices explicitly states that the optimal approach involves using separate IPs. One IP should be exclusively dedicated to sending transactional emails, while a separate pool of addresses should be used for marketing emails, to achieve optimal deliverability.
Related resources
15 resources
Related pages
Why use subdomains for email marketing deliverability?
Do transactional emails negatively impact marketing email deliverability, and is it necessary to use separate IP addresses for them?
Will using a subdomain for different email types affect my primary domain's reputation?
Should I move promotional email campaigns to a dedicated subdomain?
Should I use a subdomain or my main domain for marketing emails?
Should I authenticate email with my own domain or an ESP's domain?
A simple guide to DMARC, SPF, and DKIM
A practical guide to understanding your email domain reputation
What happens when your ip gets blocklisted?
Why Your Emails Are Going to Spam in 2024 and How to Fix It
