Set up and verify an email domain in Pendo

To send emails through Orchestrate or Listen, you must set up and verify your email domain. This ensures your organization appears as the sender and improves email deliverability.

Note: If you're using third-party tools like HubSpot or Marketo to send emails through Orchestrate, domain verification isn't required.

Prerequisites

Only Pendo admins can set up and verify domains. Before you begin:

• Ensure you own or can manage the domain you want to use.
• Prepare a subdomain to use as your MAIL FROM domain, which improves deliverability and security.

You must verify both the domain and the MAIL FROM domain before you can send emails through Pendo.

Add an email domain

1. In the top-right corner of Pendo, go to Settings > Subscription settings.
2. Select the Domains tab.
3. In the Email domain field, enter your organization’s email domain, for example acme.com.
4. In the MAIL FROM domain field, enter a subdomain, for example mail.acme.com.
   • It must be a subdomain of the domain you're verifying.
   • It can't be a subdomain that you use to send or receive emails.
5. Select Continue. DNS records display for your domain.
6. Verify your domain records to complete setup. See Verify domain records.

Note: The domain status remains Pending until all domain records are verified.

Add multiple domains

You can add up to 10 unique domains per subscription.

1. In the Domains tab, select Add domain.
2. For each domain, repeat the steps in Add an email domain.
3. For each domain, verify the domain records to complete setup. See Verify domain records.
    

By default, domains must be unique between subscriptions. A subscription cannot set up a domain already in use on another subscription. To change this, see Organization-level domain below.

Organization-level domain

If you are an organization with multiple subscriptions, and you have a need to use one domain across multiple subs, you can request this by opening a support ticket. See How to get help from Technical Support.

Once applied, an organization-level domain will appear as a read-only configuration. You can request to update or delete it by opening another support ticket.

Note: Whether applying multiple or organization-level domains, the domain must be unique across the server.

Verify domain records

To verify domain records, you must add all DNS records provided by Pendo to your domain host.

1. In the Records table, expand each record type to view the values.
2. For each record, copy the name and the value of the record, and add it to your DNS registry. Use the copy function in the UI, or download the record names and values as a CSV file to copy from.

Note: Add the records to your DNS registry exactly as shown. Mismatched records can cause verification failure.

Verification can take up to 72 hours. You'll see a confirmation message when verification is complete.

Once verified, domains appear in email settings as selectable Sender and Reply-to addresses. See Update email settings for more information.

Important: To safeguard your domain's reputation, email sending is automatically disabled if the bounce rate exceeds 3%. Ensure your email address metadata is accurate and up to date.

Delete an email domain from Pendo

To fully disconnect a domain from Orchestrate:

1. Disable any journeys or delete any emails using the domain. Deleting an email is permanent.
2. In the Domains tab, select the trash icon next to the domain.
   
   
3. In the confirmation modal, select Yes, delete.
4. Delete the domain's DNS records from your host.

Add custom tracking domain for email identities

Custom tracking domains for email identities are important for several reasons:

• Improved deliverability. A tracking domain helps establish trust with email service providers by aligning the links in your emails with your domain. This reduces the likelihood of your emails being flagged as spam and improves overall deliverability rates.
• Branding consistency. Using your own tracking domain ensures that any links in your emails reflect your brand rather than a third-party domain. This builds credibility and provides a consistent brand experience for recipients.
• Avoiding spam filters. Many spam filters scrutinize links in emails to detect phishing or suspicious activity. Using a tracking domain aligned with your sender domain helps minimize the chances of your emails being flagged as phishing attempts.

Add a custom tracking domain with a SSL and CDN provided by Pendo

This section details how to add a custom tracking domain where Pendo provides the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and CDN (Content Delivery Network). To begin, you need to select a domain to be used as your tracking domain – this must be a subdomain of your email domain – and send it to Pendo support.  Pendo creates the following entities on your behalf:

1. Custom tracking domain.
2. SSL certificate.
3. CDN distribution.

After creating the entities, Pendo provides you with a set of CNAME records to add to your DNS registry.

1. Add the CNAME records provided by Pendo for the new domain to the DNS registry. This verifies the domain as an email identity, validates the SSL certificate and configures the use of the CDN distribution.
2. After the entries are configured, contact Pendo support for the final enablement of the custom tracking domain.

Add a custom tracking domain with your own SSL and CDN

This section details a more advanced process for adding a custom tracking domain with your own SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and CDN (Content Delivery Network).

1. Select a domain to be used as your tracking domain, which should be a subdomain of your email domain.
2. If you don’t have one yet, create a new account with a Content Delivery Network (CDN), such as Amazon CloudFront.

3. Configure the CDN to the origin, which is the SES tracking domain, for example, r.us-east-1.awstrack.me. The CDN must pass the Host header supplied by the requester to the origin.
   
   Reference the table below for the correct tracking domain:

   Pendo data center	Tracking domain
   US	r.us-east-1.awstrack.me
   Europe	r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me
   Japan	r.ap-northeast-1.awstrack.me
   Australia	r.ap-southeast-2.awstrack.me

4. Continue with DNS configuration:
   • Option A. If you use Route 53 to manage the DNS configuration for your domain, and CloudFront is your CDN, create an alias record in Route 53 that refers to your CloudFront distribution. For more information, see Creating records by using the Amazon Route 53 console.

   • Option B. In the DNS configuration for your subdomain, add a CNAME record that refers to the address of your CDN.

     Record	Name	Value
     CNAME	custom.domain.com	<cdn.distribution.address>

5. Acquire an SSL certificate from a trusted Certificate Authority. The certificate must cover both the subdomain you created and the CDN you configured.
6. Upload the certificate to the CDN.
7. Verify the custom tracking domain setup. See Verify the custom tracking domain setup below.
8. Once the custom tracking domain is verified, contact Pendo Support for the final enablement.

Verify the custom tracking domain setup

To confirm your setup is correct, you must verify that the region reflects the region your domain was created in and that the protocol is https.

To verify the custom tracking domain setup, run the following command:

curl --head https://custom.domain.com/favicon.ico

For the command above, this response is returned:

(python-sdk-test) jdoe@12a34567b89c BaconRedirectService % curl --head https://custom.domain.com/favicon.ico
HTTPS/1.1 200 OK
x-amz-ses-region: us-east-1
x-amz-ses-request-protocol: https
Content-Type: image/x-icon
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2024 13:50:14 GMT

This response contains the following properties:

• The x-amz-ses-region header value is the SES (Simple Email Service) region that receives the request.
• The x-amz-ses-request-protocol header value is the protocol used for the request between the CDN and SES in the header.