Sender Reputation & Pro Domain

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Welcome back now that your convert kit account or whichever email service provider you decide to go with is all set up. It's time to dig a little bit deeper. Now, when you get serious about list-building, you then have to worry about more of the technical details. However, I don't want to worry you because it's going to be step-by-step but a major part of becoming a serious.
Entrepreneur, I think in today's age, but also a serious list builder is having a quote real domain. So let's get real. And let's talk about domains, what they mean, what they do for you and how they pertain to the list launching lab and your email list building in general. As I said, there is a little bit of a tech talk warning going to happen for this video.
However, I don't want you to worry because it's always step-by-step. You can always watch the video again, and I assure you we can get through this together. Okay. So let's start at the very basics of what is a domain. A domain is your website, which is something you would have maybe already known about, but it's also an email and your brand, obviously it's what a lot of the world sees of who you are.
And it's especially very at the forefront with how you show up in the virtual world. So here's a list of our emails and websites and the highlighted areas. Are the actual domains that we own. Now, why do domains matter for the list launching lab for all of you that set up your convert kit accounts and used a normal email address?
Like I did in this example here, you can see, I used my personal Gmail account. You might have. Or you probably did get this little warning. This you're using a free email address, and this can negatively impact your deliverability in this module. Not only are we going to solve this problem, fix this error and also explore why it's happening and how fixing this air actually helps you build your list momentum as you move through this launching lab.
But more importantly, as you move forward in your business. Now, just to compare, this is our real account. This account here is what I made so I can get a better idea and remember what it's like to first open a convert kit account. However, this is a real account and you can see that that air does not exist.
And you'll also notice that because we're using email. Addresses that we own the domain to. Now you may be asking why does this matter? Why does convert kit care? If I sent from a Gmail address and what that has to do with his reputation, specifically sender reputation, you see each email domain is monitored to ensure that it's behaving properly.
In other words, each email domain has a reputation associated with it, and the reason why ConvertKit and. Oh, every other email service provider, they're all in the same boat. If I wasn't clear about that, they would all provide similar areas around if you're using a Gmail or Yahoo or Hotmail account. And if they don't warn you, they're doing you quite a disservice.
But I digress. The reason is that that's sending behavior would then be attributed to the g-mail domain, which is owned by Google. And when it comes to reputations and email center, reputations. Going and using a very large pool, like a g-mail domain as a cylinder, reputation is not allowed and that's, what's causing that air.
And that's why using a domain that you own, that you build your reputation around in the digital world. In the email sending world does not give that air and sending reputation is exactly as. You would think it is. It's just like your reputation, your professional reputation, if you will. And just like your reputation, you built it over time.
And that's why it is so important to set up your own domain. Whether you already own a domain or you need to purchase one, I will show you how to do that in this module. But either way, it's important to get it set up under your own domain so that you can start building your reputation. And the sooner you start building your reputation, the better and email sender reputation is not fully understood.
They don't have full transparency because then it would probably allow people to then gain the system. So there's not full transparency of how to have a good sender reputation. However, it's also. Very basic and obvious don't spam people. Don't email people that didn't ask you to, if they no longer want to hear from you, you give them a way out.
And those are all the practices we teach in this launching lab. And that is further backed up by any serious email service provider convert kit. Included. So getting off on the right foot with a great domain is going to build your reputation and that will serve you forever. This is a weekly email that one of our email service provider sends it's not convert kit.
We use something else to send a little bit of a higher volume. However, it's a great indicator of how a reputation works. So you can see on this chart that I get sent every week, how many emails are sent? Open rate, complete rate, but also the reputation on the bottom rate. And you can see, we have an excellent reputation.
Now. It does fluctuate actually, as we have higher yielded months, more subscribers added, there tends to be a little bit higher, a complaint rate and bounce rate. Now I didn't cover this in the terminology, but a bounce rate is sending to a email that doesn't exist or that rejects the email. Usually it's because that email doesn't exist.
Basically somebody gave a fake email. So that's that bounce rate you can see that's actually relatively high. That's something that we battle with on and off. And you can also see our complaint rate, which is about a half a percent. So you can see that we have a bounce rate. We have complaints happening no matter what happens, no matter how diligent you are, no matter how transparent you try and be.
These things still happen. And the good news is we still have an excellent reputation. Now we do actually fluctuate. As I was saying, we sometimes go down to a good reputation. And again, these are sort of arbitrary values that we don't understand. I don't know what makes our reputation good. I don't know what makes it excellent because it's not like the complaint rate is.
Astronomically higher when we get lower to a good reputation. So it's a bit of a guessing game. However, it's good to just understand that if you effectively follow good practice and don't spam people, et cetera, et cetera, your reputation will grow. And that ultimately means you will be delivered to more inboxes.
You see that another statistic on this chart is delivery rate. Basically how many. Emails are sent and how many emails are actually successfully delivered. So, as I said, why this matters today and especially along your journey of the list launching lab is you begin to build your reputation today. Now back to domains.
I'm going to talk about how to buy domains. Some suggested places if you don't have any, but if you already have your domain and if you already have your domain, that is great. And I still think that this is worth your time. As I have some little tips along the way. Now, if you do not own a domain, I do have a sort of nine one, one pro tip, and that is to try and buy your name.
So whatever your name is, Carson grady.com. And I will show right away how to buy a domain. And more importantly, begin by searching if that domain is even available, because a reality is the internet has been around for quite a while and a lot of domains have been purchased. So what to do if your name is not available, what we do is we get creative.
If we have to, now here is a list of domains and the corresponding. Mark and degree of how much Carson thinks that they're a good idea. So at the very top, you have your name and.com.com should always be prioritized. Now, what I have below that is Carson Grady, but a really long last name. So maybe you have a long, complicated name.
I have a sort of Amber alert here. Because we always want to have a short domain, the shorter, the better it's simply so that people can remember it and type it easier. However, I think it's always worth buying your name, your real name. If it is available now, something I have here in this Carson Navos.
Example is what happens if two letters that are the same together, better illustrated here without the capitalization back in, cause a little bit of issues. So that's not ideal. And that's why I give it a little bit of an Amber alert. Now getting into this sort of no fly zone from Carson's perspective, you're always welcome to do your own research and decide what works best for you.
However, something you might tend to want to do is find. A great domain, your name, or maybe your business, whatever, but it's taken. So you could then add a hyphen between the words and there you go. You have it. This is not a good idea. People do not tend to remember to type these sort of special characters and they should be avoided at all costs.
Now, something that's becoming more and more popular these days is they're adding more top level domains. A top level domain is.com.ca for canada.net, et cetera, et cetera. They're adding more and more of these. So I have pulled one arbitrary example. However, this is real. This Carson graded.xyz. That is a real domain you could buy and it's tempting because they are fresh.
So say a more popular name would then be not available for.com and would be for a.xyz or some other more wacky top-level domain. But you got to avoid this because again, it comes down to. User's behavior. People have just been trained for.com. It's like any time you're not using.com, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage.
Now having said all that though, it's not all doom and gloom. If you have a long name or your names are not available because we're moving quite quickly to a much more linked. World. Meaning people are much less often typing into their browser. www.kathleenseeley.com. That's becoming more and more rare.
It's much more likely that they're seeing your posts on social media or your ad on Google. Or whatever, and they're clicking to it and taking you straight to where you want them to go. And that's great. That gives you some more flexibility on your domain to worry a little bit less, if it's not exactly perfect or you don't, you know, for example, you can't buy carson.com.
How great would that be so easy to remember? However, having Carson Grady. Is pretty good because most of the time you're linking people directly. Anyways. Now back to those new tools, top level domains, that's what these.com.net, et cetera are referred to as top level domains. So these are just some of the examples I found.io has become quite popular.
It's actually used in a lot of. Tech companies, but there's also some more wacky ones like.pizza or.coach. now.coach might be kind of great for you. And I would consider still buying it, say there's carson.coach. And if it was $8 for a year, maybe I would buy it. However, I really wouldn't make my main website that because again, Back to how people truly behave is they like.com.
They're used to.com and there's also a little bit more of a deeper phenomenon going on here. If I were to show you say three links randomly on Facebook, and one of them was.pizza. I know that's an extreme example, but even let's just say. Let's tone it down and say.coach. So visit my website@carson.coach.
People might not know that that's even a website that's not known. You might not have known that that could be a website. So people aren't looking at it and it's not being digested in their brain as a website. And therefore it's even further blocking you from maybe being implanted in their mind. I wanted to talk about these alternative top level domains because I know your name might.
Not be available. So you'll be tempted to do a.net or a.me or some alternative. However, I have some better ideas to get more creative. And still stay on brand while still getting a great domain. So here are some examples. It all depends on what you are wanting to do. For example, you can see something like Carson speeds or the cars or Carson Grady show work with Carson coach carson.com.
These domains are much more likely to be available. The challenge is just ensuring you stay on brand. You may be wondering where to buy a domain. I think the most popular probably thanks to their millions and millions of dollars of Superbowl ads is GoDaddy. Now we use GoDaddy for many, many domains for a long time.
However, I slowly realized that their prices are actually higher. Now, most domains, it depends on a lot, but most are about $10 per year. And so it's not a lot of money. However, I realized that GoDaddy charges a little bit more than pretty much every other domain and that's probably due to their popularity.
So one that we use now that I really, really like is called Namecheap. Uh, namecheap.com and I wanted to show you how you can buy a domain and also search for domains and see what is available. So over here on namecheap.com, I'm going to enter my name, Carson grady.com. That's my ideal domain that I want.
And it's just seeing if it's available. So it's not available because I already own it, but we can change it to suit. The sea of Carson speaks is available and it is. Awesome. You can see that it lists a bunch of other domain options for you. You'll see some of those XYZ. See, I told you they exist as well as some other top level domains.
So just for this example, I thought it'd be fun to buy a real domain. So we're going to go with carson.link again. I wouldn't use this for my website, however, maybe as a URL, shortner. I might use it, but at this point I already owned personally, I think almost a hundred domains and our company owns probably another hundred.
So what's another one to the pile. And just like that we have bought our domain. So let's talk about what is next now that you own a domain. There's a few things that you can do with it. A domain really unlocks a lot of stuff, and that includes hooking it up to a real email provider. And the example that I'm going to use and that we suggest is that you use Google G suite, and I'll talk about why in the next video, it's going to be another technical dive.
However, we will get through it, and we will have your domain then connected to convert kit or whatever email service provider you chose. So see you there.