When creating a campaign, you will be asked to provide a sender email address.
Why we don’t recommend a free email domain
While almost any email address can be used, we highly recommend not to use domains from free email providers, such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL, etc. This is because they do not provide great deliverability rates. Furthermore, using free domains as sender addresses often results in higher chances of emails being flagged as spam, as mailbox providers block or filter these messages due to restricted policies enforced by DMARC.
If using a free email domain, you will have to verify it via a confirmation email that will be sent out to this particular email address.
We suggest that you use your own domain email address so that you can authenticate it yourself. This increases the chances of your emails landing in the recipients’ main inboxes rather than their spam or junk folders. By setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, you can also authenticate your sender identity, further strengthening your domain's reputation and enhancing deliverability.
We highly recommend using Google Workspace, which allows you to create an email address with your own domain.
Once you’ve got your own domain email address, take a look at our article How to verify and authenticate your domain to significantly improve your deliverability rate.
How using a free email domain can affect your deliverability
The chances of your email landing in the recipients’ spam or junk folder increase when you send it from a free email domain sender address. Sometimes, the email may not arrive at all. This is not only due to spam filters but also restrictive mailbox policies that classify emails sent from free domains as unreliable for campaigns or bulk messaging.
Free email providers, such as Google, Yahoo, or Outlook, often have policies set in place that are meant to prevent spammers and phishers. However, these policies can sometimes reject emails that are sent by honest email marketing professionals from a free domain address. Additionally, this often leads to higher bounce rates for campaigns as receiving servers might identify such emails as spam or phishing attempts.
A DMARC policy, which stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance, is mostly responsible for this.
If a domain has a DMARC policy set in place, it can tell servers how to act upon incoming mail from particular senders, depending on whether they contain the appropriate DKIM and SPF records.
Its main functions include:
Preventing unauthenticated entities from sending mail on behalf of a domain
(also known as spoofing)Increasing visibility by allowing domain owners to see emails that were sent on behalf of their domain
Creating clear standards that help keep the email ecosystem safe and trustworthy
Sometimes, free email domain providers, such as Google, Yahoo or Outlook, have policies set in place that instruct their receiving servers to reject all emails that fail DMARC checks. This means these emails will be marked as spam, junk, or may never be delivered at all.
Because of this, we strongly recommend that you purchase a domain (even if you don’t have a website under it) and send emails from an email address that’s connected to this domain. To transition, begin by purchasing a unique domain from a registrar, creating an email address that uses this domain, and setting up necessary authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). Once these steps are complete, update your sender email in your campaign settings for reliable campaign delivery.
Note: To learn more about DMARC, see The basics of DMARC.
Using an email address connected to your domain will increase your chances of landing in your recipients’ main inboxes, and not their spam or junk folders. Moreover, having a custom domain email address also enhances the professional appearance of your brand, positively influencing recipients' trust and engagement.
If you don’t want to create an email address with your domain’s hosting provider, you could always create it with Google Workspace.