Email at an Old Domain After a Rebrand

The address people still use

A business takes a new name and a new domain. The website moves, the email addresses change, the signatures are updated, and a notice goes out to customers.

Months later, mail is still arriving at the old addresses: from customers, suppliers, the accountant and the insurance broker. Some of it matters a great deal.

Nobody is ignoring the change. Their email programs remember the old address and offer it whenever they type your name, and they reply to threads that began years ago.

So the old addresses either keep working for years after a rebrand, or the mail sent to them quietly disappears.

Where the old address lives on

• Autocomplete in every customer's email program, offering the old address first.
• Old threads that people answer months or years later.
• Accounts payable systems that send statements and remittances automatically.
• Paperwork in customers' files: quotes, invoices, forms and business cards.
• Online accounts that use an old address as the login or recovery email.
• Directories and listings that copied your details once and never again.

The fifth is the one that turns an old domain into a risk. The registrar, the hosting, the bank and the Google accounts may all still send their password resets to an address at the old domain.

Why the old domain has to stay

Once the website has moved, letting the old domain go at its next renewal looks like a sensible saving.

When a domain lapses, its email stops. Anyone writing to an old address gets a bounce, worded as if the business had closed.

Later the domain is released, and anyone can register it. Whoever does can set up email and receive every message sent to your old addresses, password resets included.

Renew it for several years with auto-renew on, in the same account as the new domain. Customers who need you once every few years will write to the address on their last invoice.

Delivering old mail to the right person

The cleanest arrangement adds the old domain to the business's email service as a second domain. Each old address then delivers straight into the matching person's new mailbox.

G Suite and Office 365 both allow this, and many hosting control panels can forward a whole domain's mail to another domain.

Forwarding from a separate server works too, with a catch: the message arrives from a server the original sender never authorised, which some spam filters distrust.

Avoid a catch-all, which accepts mail for any made-up address and soon fills with spam. Send the old address of anybody who has left to whoever took over their work.

An automatic reply that does one job

Delivery keeps the mail. An automatic reply teaches the sender, in four short sentences.

The business has a new name. Its email address is now this one. Your message has arrived and will be answered. Please update your address book.

The third sentence matters most. Without it, careful senders write again to the new address, and the business answers the same question twice.

Set the reply only on mail sent to the old addresses, with a rule matching the old domain, and where the system allows, limit it to once per sender every few days.

When nearly everything still arriving is spam, switch the reply off, since answering spam only confirms that an address is live. Keep the delivery going.

Replying from the new address

The automatic reply tells people. The replies your staff send are what actually change the address their email programs offer next time.

Many mail programs answer from whichever address a message was sent to. Each reply from an old address then strengthens it in the customer's address book.

Check the default sending address on every computer and phone, so every reply goes out from the new domain, with the new address in the signature.

A worked example

An environmental testing lab analysing water and soil samples took a new name and domain after merging with a smaller lab in the next town.

Mail to the old domain was left forwarding from the old hosting account, which was due to be cancelled at the end of the year.

Consultants and well owners kept sending sample paperwork to the old addresses, and the lab's own chain-of-custody forms, printed in bulk years earlier, still listed them.

Some forwarded messages were landing in spam folders, and the lab's registrar and payment accounts still sent their password resets to an old address.

The old domain was renewed for five years and added to the lab's email service as a second domain, so each old address delivered into the matching mailbox.

A rule now answers anything addressed to the old domain, staff reply from the new one, the accounts have moved, and the forms were reprinted.

Accounts still tied to the old address

Go through every account that uses an old address as its login or for recovery: registrar, hosting, Google, social pages, banking, payroll, supplier portals and software subscriptions.

Change each one to an address at the new domain, preferably a shared one rather than a single person's.

Do it while the old addresses still receive mail. Many services confirm a change of email by writing to the old address first, and that confirmation has to arrive.

The counter-case

Some rebrands carry less mail across.

A sole trader who rarely used the old domain's email may need only a year of forwarding and an automatic reply, though the domain itself should stay registered.

A name given up because of a dispute may have to be handed over by a set date. Then the work is moving every contact and account before that date, rather than keeping the old addresses.

For everyone else, keep the old domain, deliver its mail, and answer it with the new address for as long as it keeps arriving.

Before the old domain renews

1. Renew the old domain for several years.
2. Keep auto-renew on against a current card.
3. Add it to your email service as a second domain.
4. Map every old address to a mailbox someone reads.
5. Set the automatic reply for old addresses only.
6. Reply from the new address on every device.
7. Move every account login to the new domain.

Step seven is the one that removes the real risk. Until every login and recovery email has moved, the old domain still holds the keys to accounts the business depends on.

Checking whose account the old domain sits in, now that the public record no longer shows the owner, is covered in WHOIS goes quiet on Friday.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.