Hey lemlister! 👋
Setting up your Custom Tracking Domain (CTD) is a real asset since it allows you to:
Track your campaigns' click rate. Indeed, without a CTD, you won't get any click rate stats from your Reports section.
Boost your deliverability since using your own custom domain, and not a "shared domain", will protect your domain reputation.
Well, two excellent reasons for creating your CTD asap!
No worries, you just need to follow the steps below and the video if needed. 🙂
1️⃣ Go to the Settings in the app:
➡️ From the Dashboard access the Settings section by clicking on your profile picture at the top right corner
➡️ Go to the Tracking domain section
➡️ by clicking on the Setup button, place your email domain
➡️ now add your domain and hit the Check button
if my email is [email protected] - I will place the domain lemlist.com
➡️ lemlist will automatically generate the info you need to complete your Custom Tracking Domain set-up (circled info below)
☝️The "Host" name can vary from one user to another.
So you may end up with "trail" or "route" or "lemtrail" according to their "availability". But let's not go down that road as we don't need it to set up your CTD! 😊
Keep these 3 precious pieces of info and move on to the next step.
2️⃣ Then, create CNAME in your DNS with info lemlist generated for you
To create a CNAME, you need to go to your domain provider and edit your domain's DNS (Domain Name Service) records. And to do that, you may need administrator access... So ask your dev team to help you out with it 🤓
🌈 Once you got access to your domain provider, go to the "DNS" section, click on the domain you want to add a sub-domain to, and then follow the steps below.
☝️ FYI, keep in mind that each domain provider has its own interface, that's why you may not have the exact same "fields names" as below. But don't worry we put the most common ones so you're not lost 😉
Once you are on the "DNS" section of your domain, you'll have a button to create a new entry.
Click on it and a new window will appear with different options. You need to complete the 3 fields with info lemlist generated for you (1st part of this article) ⬇️
1️⃣ For the "TYPE" field.
👉 Select "CNAME".
2️⃣ For the "NAME" or "HOST" field.
👉 Refer to the name lemlist generated, it can be "trail", "route" or "lemtrail"
3️⃣ For the "HOSTNAME" or "VALUE" or "POINTS TO" field.
👉 Type "custom.lemlist.com." (leave the final dot if accepted, if not remove it)
4️⃣ Then come back inside lemlist settings and add your custom tracking domain that should look like trail.yourdomain.com in your settings - team (or user) - custom tracking domain.
💡Tips:
For those using Cloudflare: when setting up your CNAME record, set it to DNS proxy only by clicking on the little orange cloud at the end of your DNS line (the default is set to http and DNS).
If your domain is “yahoo.com”, then your custom tracking domain - full domain - should be “track.yahoo.com”.
If you need a tutorial for a specific domain provider, here are some lemlister approved tutorials:
Boom! The hard part is in the bag, done! 👏
3️⃣ Go back to lemlist
1️⃣ Press "Setup my tracking domain"
lemlist will check your DNS records and see if everything looks good.
If it's not working, no worries as it can take up to 72 hours before your DNS record get distributed around the Internet.
In that case, my advice is to set up an alarm 72 hours later to remind you to go back to lemlist and finish the set-up.
In the meantime, you can also check with host support if they see in their backend if everything is ok from their side since lemlist cannot check their backend.
4️⃣ Test your new domain
Once you've finished the setup, you can double-check if it's working.
Go to your browser, copy-paste your domain and see if it displays the message below 🎉
If yes, everything is fine!
Otherwise, there's a problem in your configuration and your tracking domain will not work. 😔 In that case, try again with your dev team, check the tutorials we suggest, or watch the video below 😉
If you part of a team where all members have the same domain, then set up the CTD from the Settings - TEAM section
and under the Cockpit - Manage teams next to your team add the CTD
➡️ If members of your team have different domains, each user will have to create a CTD from the User section.
➡️ For both the process is the same, you need to enter your domain (domain of the email address you previously linked with lemlist account) and click Setup tracking domain.
Heads up! It's not possible to use the same custom tracking domain in separate teams for security reasons. If CTD is not set under the "Team" section - which will be used by the whole team, you are not able to set the same custom tracking domain if you are setting it under the "User" section 🤺
So what you need to do is create as many different Cnames as teams you have. 🤓
You probably created the actual one using the subdomain "trail" to make your CTD look like trail.yourdomain.com.
So now, you need to follow the creation process of a new CNAME again but simply use another subdomain.
It could be "lemtrail", "route", "abracadabra"... 😄
No worries if you still have some questions left, ping us on the chat and we'll do our best to help you out quickly.
Enjoy.