Adding custom domains to your Feathr account enables you to build web pages using Feathr's tools, but host them on your own domain. It also connects your email sending domain to your Feathr email marketing campaigns, which enables more stringent privacy protections. Continue reading to learn how to connect your custom domain.
Quick-Start Steps (scroll for detailed instructions)
- Log in to Feathr and navigate to Profile & Settings > Account Settings > Domains.
- Click '+ Add New Domain.'
- Follow the instructions of the Domains Wizard, which will fill in the sub-domain information for you.
- Return to the domains table, and click 'Save records' to download domain records in .csv format.
- Paste those records in the appropriate places in your domain registrar, or send the records to your organization's webmaster.
- Wait for domain to show as ready in domains table (~24 hours).
Watch this short video to see the steps demonstrated, and continue reading the article for more detailed information.
Why Add a Domain?
The primary reason to add your domain to your Feathr account is to improve deliverability of your email campaigns. When ISPs and email clients see mail coming from an authenticated domain, they know it was actually sent by the person who claims to have sent it. That gets your message into more inboxes.
Adding your domain also enables DKIM & SPF protections, industry-standard security measures for email validation. These are designed to protect your organization from email spoofers and spammers who might try to illicitly use your domain.
Until you connect your domain to Feathr, any pages you build in Feathr will be served on the domain l.feathr.co. This does not affect the page's functionality in any way, but it may provide a somewhat jarring experience to your visitors and prospects, who, when clicking on a page coming from your organization, may expect to see your organization's name in the URL. Adding your own domain to Feathr is a simple process and will improve the continuity of your visitors' experience.
Adding an email sending domain also immediately pre-verifies any email address belonging to your domain as an authorized sender in Feathr. This saves time in future campaigns, especially when more than one marketer at your organization is using Feathr.
Because of the above reasons, we strongly urge Feathr customers to go through the simple steps to add their custom email sending domain.
How to Add Your Domain
Connecting your domain to Feathr does not require technical expertise, but does require access to whichever domain registrar your organization uses. We cannot provide support information for every domain registrar platform, but the general steps are the same for each, and it's mostly the location to paste domain records within individual registrars that differs. If you have an IT department or webmaster, either ask them for secure access to your domain registrar or send them the .csv files that Feathr provides for you (more on this below).
Start by logging into Feathr and navigating to the bottom left menu where you will see Profile & Settings. Click it and then click Domains in the sub-menu. Once you click, your screen will look like this (if you haven't previously added any custom domains):
Next, select + Add new domain in the top right. This will bring you to the Domain Wizard. In the first step of the Domain Wizard, enter your organization's top-level domain. For example, feathr.co or nike.com or ebay.com.
This notifies Feathr of the correct domain on which to base its suggested subdomain and email sending domains, which are part of the next two steps.
In the second step, you will be shown a suggested subdomain. This is automatically generated in order to simplify the process, but if you are an advanced user familiar with custom domains, you have the option to unlock the field and manually enter a different subdomain name.
The subdomain seen in this step will be where pages you create in Feathr are hosted.
Once you have reviewed or entered your own subdomain, move on to step 3:
Step 3 is the same as step 2, but with an email sending domain instead of a content domain. You have the same options as before, but the email domain will not be publicly visible to your email recipients. This step merely establishes your email domain.
A note about the benefits of a custom email domain:
Adding an email sending domain immediately pre-verifies any email address belonging to your domain as an authorized sender in Feathr. This saves time in future campaigns, especially when more than one marketer at your organization is using Feathr.
Additionally, adding your email sending domain enables DMARC protection, an industry-standard security measure for email validation designed to protect your organization from email spoofers and spammers who might try to illicitly use your domain.
The last step is to review the options before submitting:
Once you have clicked Add domain, you will be taken to a page where you can format your records for your domain registrar, download your records, and even send a form letter to your webmaster or web services team requesting that they add the records for you.
To format your records for your DNS, select it from the dropdown menu. If your DNS is not on the dropdown, choose the default option.
To download your records, scroll to the bottom of the page and expand the section titled View and download your domain records. This will provide the option to download your records as a .csv file. See below:
Lastly, Feathr provides the option to send a pre-written form letter to a contact of your choice (intended to be your webmaster or web services contact) that asks them to add the Feathr domain records to your DNS. This is meant to make it easy for the average Feathr user, who is a marketer and not a webmaster, to contact the correct person for the job. See below for an example:
Adding Records to your Domain Registrar
If you do not have a webmaster, here is some guidance for adding domain records.
Because this step occurs outside of Feathr, we cannot provide platform-specific guidance or screenshots. However, as mentioned above, the steps to add these records are virtually identical for every registrar, it just depends on what you click to get there.
If you will be performing this task yourself and it is foreign to you, start by searching the web or your domain registrar's help articles for "how to add domain records to registrar X." This is an essential piece of any registrar, so the information should be easy to discover.
Once you have located the page within your domain registrar's site where you will add the records, simply select the appropriate record type, and add the name and value exactly as written in the .csv files.
Common Domain Registrars
For your convenience, here is a collection of help articles that describe the process for a handful of the most popular domain registrars. If you don't see yours here, do a web search for help documentation pertaining to DNS records for your specific registrar. It is a core functionality of any domain registrar and they will certainly offer documentation of their process.
Note: all of these link away from the Feathr help desk and we do not control these URLs, so these links are subject to break without our knowledge.