Why All Business Brokers Need a Secondary Domain

In 2024, I received 3,865 generic marketing emails from business brokers. Almost all came from their primary domains. This approach risks damaging your domain’s reputation, increasing the likelihood of your emails ending up in spam or getting blocked altogether.

Goal: Demonstrate why business brokers need a secondary domain and how to set one up for email marketing.

What is a primary domain?

A domain is the part of a website address that comes after the ‘www’ and email address that comes after the "@" in emails. It's your digital "address" where people can find you online or contact you. Your primary domain is used for general and direct communication with specific or highly targeted contacts.

Examples:

Transworld’s @tworld.com Sunbelt’s @sunbeltnetwork.com Murphy’s @Murphybusiness.com

Business Brokers Should not be Sending Bulk Emails from Their Primary Domain

Sending bulk emails from your primary domain is highly discouraged by your email provider (Outlook, Gmail, etc). Moreover, this puts you at risks from ramifications that are very difficult to come back from, including:

1. Reputation Damage: If recipients mark your emails as spam, your domain's reputation could suffer. This can affect the deliverability of future emails, even for direct communications.
2. Blacklisting: Sending bulk emails can trigger spam filters, and your primary domain could end up on a blacklist. This makes it harder for your emails to reach inboxes.
3. Deliverability Issues: Email providers may throttle or block your emails if they suspect spammy behavior, impacting your ability to send important messages.
4. Trust Issues: Recipients may see your domain associated with bulk emails and question its legitimacy, leading to lower trust.
5. Compliance Risks: If you’re not adhering to email marketing regulations (e.g., GDPR, CAN-SPAM), your domain could face legal or financial consequences.

Common bulk emails I see broker sending from their primary domain are:

• Listings sent to an entire database
• Free valuation offers
• "We have buyers interested in businesses like yours"
• Holiday greetings
• Articles like "How to Sell Your Business"
• Educational content on the importance of brokers

While these messages provide value, sending them indiscriminately can harm your domain’s reputation.

What does a secondary domain look like?

A secondary domain is often similar to your primary domain but serves a different purpose, typically for marketing. For example:

Primary Domain: tupelosmb.com

Secondary Domain: tupelomail.com

All replies can still route back to your primary domain, maintaining a seamless experience while protecting your main domain’s reputation.

How to create a secondary domain?

Setting up your secondary domain is a 3 step process:

• Step 1 -?Buy your secondary domains
• Step 2 -?Configure you DNS
• Step 3 -?Set up Your Email Accounts with a Cold Email Automation Tool

Step 1 - Buy your secondary domains

You will need to purchase your secondary domain. You can buy domains from Google domain, Namecheap, GoDaddy, there are many others.

Step 2 - DNS Configuration

Citation - How to Geek

DNS (Domain Name System) translates your domain name into an IP address—essentially an internet phonebook. Follow these steps:

Here’s a video to help with these steps

1. Set Up an SPF Record

This specifies which mail servers can send emails on behalf of your domain.

• Add a TXT record.
• Enter @ in the “Host” field.
• Use a value like: v=spf1 include:example.com ~all

2. Set Up a DKIM Record

DKIM adds a digital signature to your emails to ensure they haven’t been altered.

• Generate a DKIM key pair (public and private keys).
• Add a TXT record with the public key.

3. Set Up a DMARC Record

DMARC specifies how to handle emails that fail SPF/DKIM checks.

• Add a TXT record with a value like: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]

4. Verify DNS Settings

Use tools like MXToolbox or your email provider’s diagnostics to ensure proper configuration.

Step 3 - Set up Your Email Accounts with a Cold Email Automation Tool

Once your secondary domain email accounts are set up, connect them to cold email automation tools (warming up your new domain) to streamline your outreach. Warming up an email address is the process of establishing a reputation to increase its email sending limit. Every email provider has email sending limits, which can be quite limiting if you want to do outreach at scale.

However, brand new domains don’t have the reputation needed to even come close to these hard limits.

Use a tools to warm your email domain like:

1. Mailwarm
2. Lemwarm
3. snov.io

Conclusion

Tupelo is a holistic software solution trusted by hundreds of business brokers. When it comes to email marketing, we take every precaution to protect your domain's reputation. Our campaigns strictly adhere to your email provider's daily send limits, and we carefully stagger email sends throughout the day to avoid triggering spam filters. Additionally, we strongly recommend using a secondary domain to further safeguard your primary domain's reputation and ensure seamless email deliverability.

Tupelo is the CRM and marketing solution for business brokers!