🛡️ Why You Shouldn’t Use Your Main Domain

When running cold outreach campaigns—especially to influencers—you’re sending emails to people who might not know you yet. This means your emails are more likely to get flagged as spam or ignored.

If you’re using your main domain (e.g., yourbrand.com) for outreach and your sender reputation drops because of bounces or spam complaints, your entire domain suffers. This can impact:

• Deliverability to your paying customers
• Transactional email performance (e.g., password resets, notifications)
• Your brand’s professional image

🚫 Why Subdomains Aren’t Enough

You might be tempted to just use a subdomain like outreach.yourbrand.com. While that helps isolate your sending identity a little, subdomains are still tied to your root domain. Email service providers (like Gmail or Outlook) can associate bad behavior from your subdomain with your main brand.

So if outreach.yourbrand.com gets flagged or blacklisted, it can still harm your entire domain’s reputation.

✅ Benefits of Using a Separate Domain

Instead, you should buy a completely separate domain (e.g., yourbrandoutreach.com, or yourbrand.io) dedicated to cold emails.

🔒 Pros:

• Total isolation: If it gets blacklisted, your main site and domain stay safe.
• Clean slate: You build a fresh sender reputation.
• More flexibility: You can test new copy or providers without affecting your brand emails.

⚠️ Cons (but worth it):

• Slightly higher cost (usually $10–$30/year)
• Initial setup time (takes 1–2 hours)
• Less brand familiarity (mitigated by redirecting the outreach domain to your main site)