To skip the explanation and get into the setup process, go to the bottom of the page.
What is custom domain tracking?
Klenty inserts a link into all the emails that you send. This link points to a domain used to record the engagements you receive for that email against the prospect you sent it to. Therefore, your emails have two distinct domains associated with them: your company's(the sending domain) and Klenty's(the tracking domain). Now, meet the spam filters. They're bouncers for your prospect's inbox, making sure no suspicious emails get inside. When they detect such an email, it goes straight to spam. With a custom tracking domain, you can increase your chances of getting past the filters.
To understand why - consider phishing emails. They look legitimate, but their links are shady. The sending domain may be google.com, but the tracking domain is nigerian-prince.com. In our case, the links in your emails are redirecting to a third party, i.e., klenty.com. This makes the filters suspicious. To fix this issue, we have custom-tracking domains. Sidenote: This is why some SDRs avoid links and images. The idea is that filters will treat you as harmless if the email is plain text.
How does it help with Deliverability?
Klenty maintains a large pool of tracking domains, and we constantly monitor their health. When we find a problem, the affected domain is quickly replaced with a fresh one, maintaining high deliverability for our users. Think of these tracking domains as a fleet of regular commercial planes. A custom tracking domain then is a private charter plane, working only for you. They cost you no more than the standard domains, but they need some technical know-how to set up. Here's how:
Steps to be followed on setting this up:
Head to Settings > Deliverability > Custom Domain Tracking
Create a subdomain. A domain is a high-level website address that can hold many subdomains within. google.com is a domain, and images.google.com is a subdomain. You can use any word, but we recommend keeping it simple. ex: tracking.yourcompany.com, engagement.yourcompany.com, email.yourcompany.com etc. Just make sure it's a dictionary word(filters like those), and you're not using that subdomain for anything else. If you have multiple domains for your company, you can use any of them.
Click Save and Klenty will produce a strange link(don't panic, this is normal). Copy this to a text document and keep it handy for the final step. Don't press the Verify button yet.
Go to your domain provider's hosting panel (GoDaddy, HostGator, etc.) and create a CNAME record. If you're not sure how, please google "how to add a CNAME record in [your domain provider]."
In the host field, type in the subdomain that you had created, i.e. tracking, if you had created it as tracking.yourcompany.com.
In the target field, paste the link you received from Klenty.
Once you've added the CNAME record, give it about 15 minutes. Then head back to Klenty Settings and hit Verify. You may see an error message; that means it's taking longer than expected. We'll stay on it until we're able to verify the subdomain. You've done your part.
Note: After verifying the custom domain tracking link, you can also verify the SSL certificate by sending a couple of test emails that contain a link. This will ensure the certificate is verified.
Congratulations! Klenty will now use this subdomain to track all your engagements. Your deliverability will see a boost. Your engagement tracking will be more accurate. And ultimately, you will now book more meetings and close more deals. Good luck!
CNAME update guides for popular domain providers: