What are redirect domains?

So when When someone clicks a link in your email, they don't go straight to your website. They pass through a middle domain first. That middle domain is a redirect domain.

But Here's what actually happens in that fraction of a second. Your ESP rewrites the link so it points to a tracking domain (something like clicks.yourbrand.com). When the reader clicks, their browser hits that domain, the server logs the click, and then immediately forwards them to the real destination. The whole hop takes under 200 milliseconds. The reader usually never notices it happened.

That logging step is the whole point. Without it, you'd have no idea which links got clicks, which subscribers engaged, or which campaigns drove traffic. The redirect domain is what makes click tracking possible at all.

Redirect domains also do a few other useful things:

• Branded short links. Instead of a long unwieldy URL in your email, you show something clean like go.captainscove.com/summer that forwards to the full destination page.
• Link management. If the destination page moves after you've already sent the email, you can update the redirect target without touching the email itself.
• Vanity URLs. Campaigns sometimes use short, memorable redirect URLs in ads or offline materials that forward readers to more complex web addresses.

Under the hood, redirects use HTTP status codes. A 301 is a permanent redirect, and browsers can cache it (meaning the second click might skip the tracking server entirely). A 302 is temporary, so browsers fetch it fresh every time. For click tracking, ESPs almost always use 302 so every single click gets logged, not just the first one.

One thing to watch: redirect chains. If a link hops through two or three domains before reaching its destination, load time goes up and some security filters start getting suspicious. Keeping it to one clean hop is the right call. You can read more about how the domain doing that hop affects your reputation in the question on link tracking domain reputation.

Still if you're using a shared tracking domain from your ESP rather than your own, your redirects share a reputation with every other sender on that domain. That's a big reason to consider setting up a custom tracking domain instead.

Not sure what your current tracking setup looks like? Our email header analyzer can show you which domains are touching your links before they reach a recipient.