How a public domain sender address affects email deliverability

How a public domain sender address affects email deliverability

What's a public domain email address

A public domain email address is one provided by free email service providers such as Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, Outlook, etc.

How it affects your email deliverability 

  • Recognition and trust
    Email recipients look at who sent the emails they receive. When they easily recognize the sender, they're more likely to open the email. An email from a public domain sender address may make recipients hesitate to read your email, and they may even mark it as spam.  If the recipients receive an email from patricia.b@gmail.com , they are likely to wonder about the email's origin and may mark it spam. On the other hand, if the sender address is patricia.b@zylker.com , they can immediately recognize that the email comes from the company Zylker and this familiarity will help them trust the domain. To learn more about sender recognition, click here .
  • As spammers often use public domains for their sender addresses, the domain reputation for these domains tends to be low. Using a free domain sender address gives a high chance that your emails will be classified as spam or junk. 
  • To prevent spam messages getting through, many email services follow DMARC policy to protect their domain reputations, which means that when you use public domains, there is a risk that emails will be bounced.
  • Using a public domain address to send emails does not reinforce your brand presence to your recipients.

Restricted public domains

Yahoo! and AOL have restricted the use of their domain addresses for sending campaigns, as they've made changes to their DMARC policies for security reasons. They’ve instructed other email service clients to reject the emails that come from Yahoo/AOL sender addresses but not through Yahoo/AOL servers. If you try to add sender addresses from public domains in Zoho Marketing Automation, the system will alert you. Consider the scenario below:

  1. Add a new sender address by clicking on the dropdown in the Sender Address tab.
  2. Click the Add sender address button.
  3. Enter the email address and click the green tick. If your email address is from a public domain (for example, patricia.b@yahoo.com ), you will see the error message "Use your domain-specific email address".

If you add a public domain reply to address, you will see the same error message:

Public domain reply-to address
If you add other public domains as a sender address (Gmail, Outlook, etc.), you will be prompted to use your own domain address instead:
Public domain sender address

Similarly, when you try to add a public domain sender address from Sender Address under Settings , the error message below is showed.

Why email services chose to tighten their DMARC policies

Due to increasing email-based spam aiming to acquire sensitive information (such as credit card details), email service providers made a few changes to their policies to increase email security by complying with DMARC policy. These changes help ensure that only emails from genuine senders reach the recipients' inboxes.

Anyone can use a public domain to send emails, including spammers, while genuine marketers should have their own business domain to send emails from.

As Yahoo! and AOL have already restricted use of their domains to send emails from other servers, it is very likely that other public email services will follow suit. That's why we recommend you do not use any public domain email address.

How Gmail reacts to emails sent using a public domain 

Gmail pushes emails from public domain addresses to the spam folder and warns the recipients with a message that they were unable to verify the sender domain:

Warning for public domain sender address

Manage your sender address

  • Add and verify your business domain sender address in your Zoho Marketing Automation account.
  • Authenticate your domain with SPF and DKIM.

Best practices

If you use your own business domain, the reputation of your domain, and therefore your email deliverability, will depend only on your own sending practices, and not on a public domain's reputation. Using your own business domain helps promote trust, familiarity, and easy recognition among your leads, and helps you improve and control your email deliverability and increase business.


    Access your files securely from anywhere

      Zoho CRM Training Programs

      Learn how to use the best tools for sales force automation and better customer engagement from Zoho's implementation specialists.

      Zoho CRM Training
        Redefine the way you work
        with Zoho Workplace

          Zoho DataPrep Personalized Demo

          If you'd like a personalized walk-through of our data preparation tool, please request a demo and we'll be happy to show you how to get the best out of Zoho DataPrep.

          Zoho CRM Training

            Create, share, and deliver

            beautiful slides from anywhere.

            Get Started Now


              Zoho Sign now offers specialized one-on-one training for both administrators and developers.

              BOOK A SESSION









                                            You are currently viewing the help pages of Qntrl’s earlier version. Click here to view our latest version—Qntrl 3.0's help articles.




                                                Manage your brands on social media

                                                  Zoho Desk Resources

                                                  • Desk Community Learning Series


                                                  • Digest


                                                  • Functions


                                                  • Meetups


                                                  • Kbase


                                                  • Resources


                                                  • Glossary


                                                  • Desk Marketplace


                                                  • MVP Corner


                                                  • Word of the Day


                                                    Zoho Marketing Automation

                                                      Zoho Sheet Resources

                                                       

                                                          Zoho Forms Resources


                                                            Secure your business
                                                            communication with Zoho Mail


                                                            Mail on the move with
                                                            Zoho Mail mobile application

                                                              Stay on top of your schedule
                                                              at all times


                                                              Carry your calendar with you
                                                              Anytime, anywhere




                                                                    Zoho Sign Resources

                                                                      Sign, Paperless!

                                                                      Sign and send business documents on the go!

                                                                      Get Started Now




                                                                              Zoho TeamInbox Resources



                                                                                      Zoho DataPrep Resources



                                                                                        Zoho DataPrep Demo

                                                                                        Get a personalized demo or POC

                                                                                        REGISTER NOW


                                                                                          Design. Discuss. Deliver.

                                                                                          Create visually engaging stories with Zoho Show.

                                                                                          Get Started Now









                                                                                                              • Related Articles

                                                                                                              • Managing sender details

                                                                                                                A sender address is the "From" address you use to send email newsletters to your leads. Your sender address will help recipients identify you as an email marketer promoting your brand or business. As a measure for avoiding spam, you can only use ...
                                                                                                              • Getting Started with Email Deliverability

                                                                                                                Before sending your carefully-crafted email campaigns, it's important to first learn a few basic ideas and rules of email marketing to ensure your campaigns are successful. To achieve good open and click-rates, and to avoid your emails from landing ...
                                                                                                              • How to warm up your sender domain

                                                                                                                An email delivery's performance comes with several factors, such as content quality, mailing list health, lead engagement, and, most importantly, sender domain/IP reputation. Mailbox providers such as Gmail, Yahoo!, and Outlook give ...
                                                                                                              • Sender Recognition

                                                                                                                For your email campaigns to be successful, you need to be recognizable. If your recipients don't recognize where an email is coming from, they're less likely to open it. Trust is one of the primary currencies by which your brand is valued, and it ...
                                                                                                              • Can I use a public domain-based email address to send marketing emails?

                                                                                                                We do not recommend this. Here are a few reasons why: Higher probability of landing into spam because marketing emails sent via public domains are considered fraudulent by ESPs and ISPs. Anyone can use a public domain to send emails. It doesn't build ...
                                                                                                                Wherever you are is as good as
                                                                                                                your workplace

                                                                                                                  Resources

                                                                                                                  Videos

                                                                                                                  Watch comprehensive videos on features and other important topics that will help you master Zoho CRM.



                                                                                                                  eBooks

                                                                                                                  Download free eBooks and access a range of topics to get deeper insight on successfully using Zoho CRM.



                                                                                                                  Webinars

                                                                                                                  Sign up for our webinars and learn the Zoho CRM basics, from customization to sales force automation and more.



                                                                                                                  CRM Tips

                                                                                                                  Make the most of Zoho CRM with these useful tips.



                                                                                                                    Zoho Show Resources