Wouldn’t it be amazing if you had a way of getting insights into the results of your cold email outreach? For example, if you can learn about the recipients’ behavior and measure the success of your cold outreach efforts by getting stats on the number of clicks on an email etc. Well, this is certainly achievable by email tracking.

Email tracking refers to monitoring your recipients' behavior like if an email is opened or if any links in the email were clicked etc. To obtain this information for you, we add a code to the email’s body. That code is generally in the form of a URL - for example, abc.piplai.com/[code]

The URL is changed every once in a while, that same domain is used by every pipl.ai customer unless you set up a custom tracking domain.

💡To understand the custom tracking domain better, you can relate it to a real-life example of sharing a towel in a gym. If you use a personal towel instead of sharing one with other gym fellows to wipe your sweat off it will not only be more hygienic but will also mitigate the risk of catching any germs from others.

👉 We will take an example of adding a CNAME record in Namecheap. If you are using the services of some other domain registrar, your steps to add the CNAME record may vary.

Follow these steps to add a CNAME record in your domain provider’s DNS Zone (In our case, it’s Namecheap.)

1. Login to your domain provider's account.

2. If you have multiple domains, select the domain you wish to add the CNAME record for.

3. Click on the Manage or Advance DNS option for your selected domain.

4. Click on Add New Record.

5. Enter the following values:

6. Click on the Save All Changes button to add the CNAME record successfully.

👉 CNAME record propagation can take up to 24 hours.

To add the CNAME record in pipl.ai, follow these steps:

1. Login to your pipl.ai account.

2. Click on Email Accounts in the left menu pane.

3. Select the email account from your account’s list.

4. Click on Account Settings for the selected email account.

5. Scroll down to Custom Tracking Domain.

6. Enter your Custom Tracking Domain in the input field in the following format:

px.yourdomain.com

=> Referring to the example above, the custom tracking domain will be: px.kontentup.com

7. Click on the “Next” button to proceed.

8. Upon clicking “Next” you will see the DNS record settings. Verify the settings to make sure you entered the correct values in your Domain Provider’s DNS record.

❗These are the values (Type, Host, Value) that you must use in step 5 of the section Create CNAME in DNS Zone above.

9. Click on “Verify & Save” to proceed.

10. A popup will appear asking if you want to apply these settings to all the email accounts for this domain. You can select “Yes” or “No” based on your preferences.

❗Selecting “No” will not impact your CNAME record settings for the current email address. It is just an additional check for the user’s convenience in case they wish to apply the same settings to all the email accounts of the same domain without going through all these steps to add a new Custom Tracking Domain for other emails of the same domain.

11. Once you click “Verify & Save” your details are verified in real-time and saved upon successful validation. A success popup appears on the screen upon successful validation.

A green “Verified” label will also appear in the Custom Tracking Domain section of your account settings upon the successful configuration of the CNAME record.

❗If you get a popup saying “CNAME record not found…”, check the values you entered in your domain provider’s DNS settings.

👉If the values are correct, and you are still getting the same prompt, there is nothing to be worried about as these CNAME settings can take up to 24 hours to propagate.

▶️Steps in action: Adding CNAME in pipl.ai

▶️Video Link: https://app.supademo.com/demo/0VEzY032fhmJrZBZ7QKwY