How To Set Up Branded Sending Domain in Klaviyo (2026)

0:00I've got a quick one today for you. So, I'm going to show you how to set up a branded sending domain in Klaviyo step-by-step. So, you might also see this called a dedicated sending domain, and basically it means that your emails are sent from your own domain instead of Klaviyo's shared one. And it's one of those settings that quietly drags down your email deliverability when it's not done right. And it only takes like max 5 minutes to fix. And stay with me because at the end of this video I will show you an extra tip that you need to apply for even better email deliverability. A

0:35little quick hack, but super important. And by the way, my name is Emil, and I run a retention agency for e-commerce brands. And yeah, we've set this up for more than 150 e-commerce brands. So, I'll keep this fast and just skip the fluff. So, let's hop into Klaviyo. All right. All right. So, we're in a Klaviyo test account. So, what we are going to do, once you're on this home page, we're going to the left side over here. You click on the name of your Klaviyo account, and then we are going to settings. And by default, we're landing on this general tab. So, we want to keep

1:09it like that. And then in this submenu, we want to go down all the way to domains. So, that's what you want to click on. And now you see three things over here. You can ignore the second thing and the third thing. You purely want to focus on sending domain. So, improve your email deliverability with a branded sending domain. By default, emails use a Klaviyo domain, and that's not what we want. So, simply we're going to hit add domain. And then Klaviyo will first ask you what type of emails will you be sending with this domain? So, you can use a unique sending domain for each

1:42email type to better manage your sender reputation and deliverability. So, over here you can select an email type, and you can go anywhere between marketing, transactional, or even service if you have that enabled in your Klaviyo settings. The difference between marketing and transactional, probably the emails that you are sending in Klaviyo will be marketing, but sometimes people like to bring over some transactional emails from Shopify into Klaviyo as well, and then you can mark

2:07those emails as transactional emails. So, what you can do is make two sending domains, one for marketing, one for transactional. So, hypothetically, let's say your emails are going to spam for your marketing emails. By having a separate sending domain for the transactional emails, then the transactional emails would still have email deliverability. So, that's the primary reason why Klaviyo is now splitting this. Uh for the sake of this video, I'm just going to do it for the marketing since for probably 99% of the watchers over here, it's only applicable for marketing. But, do know the thing that we're now doing for marketing, you can repeat that for transactional. You

2:45just need to use a different prefix, which I will show you in a sec. So, I'll go with marketing. Then, in the top right, we'll click on next, and then we have to select our root domain. So, if you have your website, like in our case, our website is magically.com, then the root domain is magically.com. And Klaviyo like automatically pulled this domain from the account, and you can

3:07update this in your Klaviyo settings. So, you can click on this link, and then it will bring you to your account settings, as you can see over here. And it basically takes this URL that you filled in here at the website URL. Let's get back to it. So, in our case, we're going to keep this magically.com, and we're going to hit next. Then, you have to set up your sending domain. So, that's the address that you will use to send email. And did you I mentioned about what I just said about marketing and transactional? So, here you want to make sure that you use a different

3:37sending domain for marketing and for transactional. So, again, we're just going to focus on marketing for the sake of this video, and over here we want to make sure that we add a prefix. To be honest, it really doesn't matter what we fill in here. Uh like, by default, uh Klaviyo will suggest send or hello. Both are completely fine. Again, it doesn't matter and it's something different than your email address. I know some people are saying, "Okay, my email address that I use to send emails is, for example,

4:03emil@magically.com. So, should the sending domain be emil?" No, you don't have to do that. It doesn't matter. It's not tied together. So, we're just going to keep this at send. That's perfectly fine. And then the branded sending domain in the end will be send {point} uh {dot} magically.com. Uh, so this is, of course, the domain that we filled in in the first step and this is the prefix that we're adding. Now, we have to select the routing type and you can just keep this at dynamic. That's also the recommended option and just the best

4:30option. So, don't worry about static. Just go with dynamic. Real quick, before we continue, I've got a free email marketing course on my website that breaks down email marketing in a lot more detail. It's 100% free for you to download right now and it's linked in the description below. Okay, now let's get back into it. Then we're going to hit next and now you can automatically configure your domain with entry. To be honest, I don't like to do it. I like to do it manually, so that's also what I'm going to show you in this video. So,

5:02we're just going to hit set up manually. Now, the next thing is that we need to find your DNS zone file. So, you'll need access to your DNS provider to set up your custom domain. So, select your provider and we will walk you through it finding the file. So, over here, you can select your domain provider. So, the place where you bought the domain. So, in our case, where I bought magically.com. Um, like GoDaddy is, of

5:26course, a really popular one. Cloudflare, uh, you could also have done it directly via Shopify. In our case, in my case, we did it via Squarespace. Well, it's not in this list, so I'm just going to pick other. It doesn't really matter. We're just going to get the DNS records in the next step and let's say you have it via GoDaddy, it will show you exactly where to click. Where if you go to other, yeah, you basically have to find it out yourself. But again, we use Squarespace, so I'm going to select other in this case. So, I'm going to hit next, and then we're in this final step

5:58where we need to add the DNS records. So, add a new record in your DNS zone file for each type, and then copy and paste the name and value into each record. And this is already always the phase where people start to feel scared, like DNS records sounds complicated, sounds technical. Don't worry, it's super simple. In my case, I'm going to log in to squarespace.com because that's where my domain is hosted. So, I got it already open in here, and this is what it looks like for me. As again, my domain is in Squarespace. So, in my case, in the left menu, I have a couple

6:32of options here, and I need to edit the DNS records. So, yeah, I think it makes sense to click on DNS over here. And over here, indeed, we can see all the DNS settings and records, as you can see. So, if we scroll down, there are like a bunch of them already, as you can see. And yeah, what we are going to do, we're going to add some custom records over here. That's what we're going to do. So, what we're going to do, we're going to hit add record, this button right here. And then over here, we can select everything. And we just simply go back to the other tab from Klaviyo, and

7:06then you can see we need to add 1 2 3 4 5 records over here. So, the first record is an NS record. So, and the name of it is sent. The reason why it's sent because that's the prefix that we're using. So, let's say you use the prefix hello, then you will notice that this is hello instead of sent. But in my case, it's sent, so I'm just going to copy it, and it has to be an NS record. So, over

7:29here at type, I'm going to look for NS. There we go. And the name is sent. We can leave a TTL at what it is. This is the default, that's completely fine. Then we need to fill in the name server, as Squarespace is calling it. Klaviyo is calling it the value, name servers value, it's the same. So, we can just take this one. We're going to hit this copy button and we're going to drop it in here. And then we're going to hit save. And then over here you'll see this record already exists. That's because I already added it to this Squarespace account. In your case, you won't see

8:00this and then it will just save it. And then we're going to repeat this process. So, we're going to click cancel this for now. Then we're going to hit add record again and we're going to repeat this for all the four the NS records. So, that's what we're going to do. So, we're going

8:14for NS records name send name server. We're just going to copy this and we're going to hit save. Again, record already exists in my case. Then you're going to repeat this for all three. So, it's NS3 and NS4. So, you're just going to add new records, but as you can see I already did that. And then finally, we need to add one more record over here, which is a TXT record. And then the name of it is this at icon. So, we're going

8:39to hit add record. Type is a TXT record. The name is this at and then the text is this one. So, we're going to copy it and paste it in here. And then we're going to hit save. Go. And then yeah, we're basically done with this step. So, what we're going to do next and the top right corner you can hit verify. So, that's what we're clicking. And now it says your records are verifying. So, you can close this page and most DNS records update within a few minutes, but it can take up to 48 hours. So, don't be scared uh that if it doesn't get verified

9:13within like an hour or so. Sometimes it just takes like uh 48 hours. But to be honest, nine out of 10 times it goes pretty fast. So, we'll send you a notification when this process is complete and then you can hit finish over here in the top right corner. And as you can see, like in my case, immediately it is verified and it looks like this. So, the main name send.magistrate.com, domain status verified, domain type marketing, routing type dynamic. The only thing that we need to do, and it it also says it over here,

9:43send.magically.com is ready to activate. So, we still need to activate it uh even now it's verified. So, don't forget this last step. So, click on activate, then it will say all traffic will be moved to this domain automatically, hit activate, and there we go. So, now it changed from verified to active, and that's what we want, and that's how you set up the branded sending domain. But, a really important thing that I want to show you as well, now we are in the DNS records, uh and it's not mandatory for this branded sending domain, but it is a super simple thing to add to improve your email deliverability, and that's

10:19that you need to add a DMARC record to your DNS records. And just to show you, here's like a Klaviyo guide on it. You can just Google for DMARC record Klaviyo, and then you will get into this guide. So, DMARC stands for domain-based message authentication, reporting, and performance, and it's a protocol that uses SPF and DKIM to determine the authenticity of an email. A lot of

10:41technical stuff. Uh main thing to keep in mind, you do need this for like a good email deliverability. So, below is an example of what a simple DMARC record may look like, and how different records impact email deliverability. So, this is basically what you can use, and uh this is what you need to insert as a TXT record in your DNS records. Again, we're still in the DNS records page, so why not do it right now? Do keep in mind, it could be that you already have a DMARC record, because other software sometimes make this mandatory. So, it could be for another software that you already made a

11:17DMARC record, and then of course you don't have to do this. If you want to find out if you already have a DMARC record, you can just go through the records, in my case the Squarespace page, so I just go and search for it. What you can also do, pretty easy, just Google uh for DMARC check tool. So, for example, this is an example from

11:36mxtoolbox.com. They have this DMARC check tool. So, what you will do, you fill in your domain name, in my case, majestically.com, and I'm going to hit DMARC lookup. And as you can see, it shows that I have this DMARC record already. So, the DMARC record is found, the record is valid. So, for me, it's already all good. But, it could be in your case that it shows that there's no valid DMARC record in

11:59place, and then you do need to add it. This is like a good record that you can already use, or you can use like this example where you do need to change this this mailto address, of course, and make it an email address that you have. And I can show you the record that I have in my Squarespace account. Let's search for it. So, it's a TXT record. The name is _dmarc. TTL, we can just leave it at the default again, and the text is this text that you also saw on this DMARC tool, as you can see over here. But again, you can also use this one. So, again, to

12:33rephrase this DMARC step, first check out if you already have it. If you have it, perfect, you don't have to add it. If you don't have it, please add it as a TXT record, like I just show you over here. Again, not mandatory for the branded sending domain, but it is super important for your email deliverability. So, I would highly encourage you that while you are in your DNS records, to

12:54add this record as well. And that's it. That's your branded sending domain set up and verified. Plus, your DMARC record is set up, which puts you in a much better position. But, here is the thing though. Getting this one setting right is a great starting point, but it's not the whole game. So, staying out of the spam folder for good is a longer play, and plenty can still drag you back in even after a clean setup. So, if you want my team to make sure that your brand can scale its email revenue to eight figures and beyond without leaking sales to the junk folder, There's a link

13:28below in the description to book a free call with me. And of course, if you're not ready for a call yet, but you do want to clean up your open rates, watch this video next right here, where I break down the biggest reasons that most e-com brands end up in spam in the first place. So, you will know exactly what to

13:46avoid. So, I'll see you over there.