Help Center

Email Custom Sending Domain

What is a Custom Sending Domain?

A Custom Sending Domain authenticates your emails using your own domain, so they are no longer sent “via LeadCenter.AI” in the byline. This allows your emails to be better tracked for reputation and deliverability purposes, giving you more control over how your emails are received.

By setting up a Custom Sending Domain, you grant LeadCenter permission to send emails on your behalf using a set of DNS records that must be added to your website’s DNS settings. These records do not give LeadCenter access to your domain. They simply allow inboxes to verify that LeadCenter is authorized to send emails on your behalf.

Additionally, these records typically do not require updates and will remain valid as long as they are not changed or deleted. Lastly, you are welcome to revoke and delete your Custom Sending Domain at any time. We recommend verifying with the Deliverability team, which can be reached via support@leadcenter.ai, before doing so.

Why should you set one up?

There are several benefits to setting up a Custom Sending Domain, but the primary one is if you are having inbox or spam placement issues. For reputation recovery, setting up a Custom Sending Domain (CSD) is one of the first steps we recommend. It will enable you to begin measuring your email reputation and take steps to improve it. Even if you aren’t facing reputation issues, setting one up is a great preventative measure that can help develop your sending reputation and help avoid the spam folder! 

In addition to this, there are some more stringent and secure networks, such as businesses and certain internet providers, that may not allow unauthenticated mailing to prevent spam from reaching their users. As more and more places adopt these standards, it is helpful to be ahead of the game even if your emails are landing fine right now.

DMARC Requires A Custom Sending Domain

DMARC is a fantastic security measure for protecting your domain from being spoofed, but when DMARC is enabled, setting up a Custom Sending Domain is required. Any emails sent with LeadCenter will automatically fail your DMARC policy check, resulting in your emails ending up in spam or being flat out rejected from reaching the recipients.

How to Set Up Your Custom Sending Domain

Sending emails through a custom domain gives you a better chance of reaching the inbox.

To change your sending domain:

1. Go to Settings > Email Setup
2. Click theSending Domain
3. Click Change Sending Domain
4. Choose the custom domain you’d like to use for sending emails
5. Click Next
6. Verify your domain by installing the CNAME records provided by LeadCenter in your domain’s DNS settings.
   • There are times when DNS settings require a trailing period (“.”). If your records are not verifying, try adding a period at the end of the host name (e.g., "leadcenter." instead of just "leadcenter").
7. Click I’ve added these records
8. LeadCenter then checks for the CNAME records

Helpful documentation for the most commonly used DNS providers:

• Amazon Web Services
• Bluehost
• Cloudflare
• You will need to “gray-cloud” the subdomains we provide to you during setup since they will not be handling web traffic.
• DreamHost
• GoDaddy
• Google Domain
• HostGator
• Namecheap

CNAME records may take up to 24 - 48 hours to register with your DNS provider.

Appending your domain name to the Host/Name record

When configuring your CNAMEs, some domain providers require that the domain name be added at the end of the host/name record. For the domain "yoursite.com", append the domain name to the beginning of each CNAME record as shown:

1. Instead of leadcenter enter "leadcenter.yoursite.com"
2. Instead of lcm1._domainkey enter "lcm1._domainkey.yoursite.com"
3. Instead of lcm2._domainkey enter "lcm2._domainkey.yoursite.com"

Unsupported Domain Registrars

There are existing CNAME records in your DNS settings

As LeadCenter uses both "lcm1." and "lcm2."  as selector prefixes, which may conflict with other DNS records that use the same prefix. If there are existing lcm1._domainkey and lcm2._domainkey CNAME records within your DNS settings, we will need to edit LeadCenter's auto-generated records to resolve the conflict.

For these cases, contact our support team to request Custom CNAME records for your account as a workaround.

Alternatives to CNAME records

Some domain registrars may not support underscores in CNAME records or may restrict modifications to built-in CNAME configurations (Such as SendGrid).

For these cases, contact our support team to request MX/TXT records for your account as a workaround.

What to do once you have this set up and verified

Once your Custom Sending Domain is set up, ensure your campaigns use a "from" email address that matches the verified domain to meet LeadCenter's minimum sending requirements, ensuring healthy Deliverability results. Go to Sending Email Address page for more information how to setup a sending email address.

What do you do if you have multiple accounts that use the same domain?

Normally, you cannot set up multiple accounts to use the same verified domain, as the required CNAME records cannot be added to the same domain more than once. But, if you have multiple accounts that utilize the same from email (such as the same brand but in multiple countries/languages) we can assist with this. Please reach out to our support team via support@leadcenter.ai and let us know which accounts you need to link and we can set this up on the back end.