Email open tracking is a powerful tool for understanding recipient engagement, but it comes with a significant drawback - it can harm email deliverability.

Need help asking your IT team for help? Scroll to step 4 😉

When you use Luna's own email pixel for tracking opens, email clients and spam filters may flag your emails as suspicious or even as spam, as many spammers and phishing attacks also use tracking pixels.

This is because the pixel's domain is not the same as your email or company domain, a discrepancy that can trigger spam filters.

Adding your own custom tracking domain can help mitigate this issue.

By aligning the tracking domain with your own domain, you reduce the risk of your emails being flagged as suspicious, thereby increasing the chances of your emails landing in the inbox rather than the spam box.

Think of email deliverability like getting through airport security.

Just as airport security screens for items that might pose a risk, email clients and spam filters screen for elements that might indicate spam or phishing attacks.
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Using a different domain for your tracking pixel is like trying to get through airport security with someone else's boarding pass—it raises red flags and can get you stopped in your tracks.

In contrast, using your own custom tracking domain is like having a boarding pass that matches your ID perfectly.

It's consistent, it's expected, and it allows you to pass through 'security' (spam filters) with ease, ensuring your email lands in the recipient's inbox.

Now that we know why it's so important to add your own custom tracking domain, let's walk through how we can do this 👇🏼

Step 1: go to the "Email accounts" tab

📧 Open email accounts

​Step 2: turn on email open tracking in the tracking settings

You can do this by turning on the following switch:

Now, a section called 'Custom Domain' should appear below this setting.

​Step 3: enter your tracking domain (luna.yourdomain.com)

Add 'luna.' to the start of the domain you're sending emails with and enter it in the text field and click "Add" (my domain is getluna.ai in this case):

​Step 4: add a CNAME record to your DNS settings

Now, if you're not the one who can manage your domain's DNS settings, you might need some help here.

We must now add a CNAME record to your domain's DNS settings. Remember: we're using the domain where you're sending emails from.

Keep your Luna web app open in another tab.

The name/host of the record should be "luna" and it should point to "prox.getluna.solutions". Like so:

(the way you enter the record can vary slightly based on the domain provider)

Once that's done, go back to Luna.

If you need help from your IT team, here's a template that you can use:

Subject: Request to Add CNAME Record to DNS Settings

Hi [Domain Administrator's Name],

I'm in the process of enhancing our email functionality and require a small but crucial update to our domain's DNS settings to ensure deliverability and custom domain tracking are functional from Luna's email UI.
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In order to do so a CNAME must be added to our DNS settings to create a custom tracking domain to track email opens. Could you assist here?
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Required DNS Change:

This CNAME record is essential for maintaining the domain we utilize for email correspondence and to ensure that Luna functions correctly without any disruptions.

Could you please add this CNAME record at your earliest convenience?

If you need any further information or assistance from my side, please let me know.

Thank you in advance!

Step 5: wait a few minutes and click on 'check'

Keep checking the status of the CNAME and SSL to make sure they get verified. After waiting for usually a few minutes, but sometimes a few hours, you should see a green checkmark if everything went well!

Now you're ready to send out emails with open tracking enabled! 🥳

Good to know 1: we made the custom tracking domain feature individual for everyone. This means that if an admin adds a custom tracking domain, this does not apply to all members in the organization. Every individual Luna account still needs to add the custom domain if they'd like to use it. The reason for this is because oftentimes, teammates within the same company use an email address with a different domain.

If your teammate already added the DNS record, you won't have to do so anymore and adding a custom tracking domain will go very quickly for you.

Good to know 2: make sure that the custom tracking domain host is the same as the domain you're sending emails from. Otherwise, deliverability might still be harmed.