Email open rates tracking is available on all Mixmax plans, including the Free plan, but some options, like clicks and downloads tracking, are available only on the Mixmax Small Business plan and above. Check out our pricing page for more information.
Mixmax Custom Domains are an important tool in improving your email deliverability and ensuring your emails look more like they were sent directly by you.
Mixmax tracking and calendar features use web requests to work - your recipients send and receive data to Mixmax's servers so that we can track opens and downloads and show your calendar information. The custom domains feature allows you to use your company's domain for this traffic. When enabled, your recipients will only see links to your domain. It helps improve your message deliverability, as some mail systems think links to domains other than the sender might be a sign of spam. It will also help differentiate your messages from other users of Mixmax -- no one else will be using the same domain for tracking or calendar purposes.
Mixmax administrators can specify a custom domain to be used across their organization in the following areas:
Click tracking: When your recipients click a tracked link, they are briefly brought to a URL with your custom tracking domain and then redirected to the link destination.
Tracking pixel: When you send an email with open tracking enabled, Mixmax embeds an invisible tracking pixel at the bottom of the email. It uses your custom tracking domain.
Unsubscribe links: Unsubscribe links in your sequence messages will use your custom tracking domain.
Downloading a cloud-hosted attachment: When you send your recipient a tracked attachment, and they download it from your email, a new tab briefly opens, from which they download their attachment. This tab will have your custom tracking domain.
Booking an event using Meeting Templates: When you set up a Meeting Template or use the Availability enhancement, your custom calendar domain will be used.
Step 1: Enter your custom domains
To set up custom domains in Mixmax, you'll need to decide what domains you want to use for Mixmax tracking and calendar links. You can choose something simple, like tracking.yourdomain.com and calendar.yourdomain.com. You can also select more obscure names or stick to an existing name scheme you already use. You need to pick new names that you are not already using, and you will need to choose different domains for calendar links and tracking.
The domain and subdomains you plan to use must have a valid SSL certificate, as we only connect using the HTTPS protocol. If the connection is attempted through unsecured HTTP, the validation will fail. To confirm if the subdomains you'll be using are secure, please check with your IT.
Once you have chosen the domains to use, go to the Admin Settings page. Click the Workspace tab in the top menu and enter your Custom calendar domain and/or Custom tracking domain.
Step 2: Create a CNAME record
You'll likely need help from your IT department or DNS administrator for this step. Once saved, each setting will tell you to create a CNAME record that points to a Mixmax domain that looks like yourcompany.vanity.mixmax.com (the first part will be different for everyone). You must create a new CNAME record for the tracking and calendar domains (for example, tracking.yourdomain.com and calendar.yourdomain.com). This process happens outside of the Mixmax user interface with your DNS provider.
Go to your domain registrar and create a CNAME record for your domain pointing to that value. The exact steps to do this will depend on your DNS or hosting service provider -- again, you'll likely need help from your IT department or DNS administrator. The new records will need to have 'label' or 'host' values of the name you've chosen (like 'tracking' or 'calendar') and 'destination' or 'target' values of the name provided by Mixmax (like 'yourcompany.vanity.mixmax.com'). If you are unsure of the details of your DNS provider, please consult their documentation or related resources for more information on how to set up a CNAME record.
Step 3: Wait for your custom domain to be validated
It can take up to a few hours for Mixmax to validate that you own the domain you've registered. It depends on how quickly your DNS registrar updates your DNS records.
Once we've validated the domains, you'll see a green checkmark next to them in your Settings, and we'll immediately begin to use it for all tracking and calendar links.