Domain Research

---
name: email-infra-domain-research
description: "Pick cold-email sending domains, brief ScaledMail to buy them, and size the build. Use for domain ideation, on-brand naming rules, avoiding spam-trap naming patterns, TLD choice, checking the registrar and date spread ScaledMail delivers, and sizing mailboxes and domains with the sizing-calculator playbook. Triggers on domain research, buy domains, sending domains, domain naming, secondary domains, registrars, ScaledMail, how many domains, how many mailboxes, infrastructure sizing, size the build. Do NOT use for DNS/mailbox setup (use the provisioning sub-skill) or connecting inboxes in Instantly (use the instantly-setup sub-skill)."
---

# Domain Research & Briefing the Buy · [Sales Ops]

> **Reads:** `{SKILL_BASE}/resources/reference.md` §4, §5, §9 · `{SKILL_BASE}/resources/approved-vendors.md` · **Runs:** `{SKILL_BASE}/playbooks/sizing-calculator`, `{SKILL_BASE}/playbooks/dns-auth-audit` · **Feeds:** the provisioning sub-skill.

## Ask first (don't generate names without these)

Domain ideation goes wrong when it starts from the brand word alone. Collect these five before suggesting anything:

| # | Ask | Why it changes the answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | **Client's primary website / brand domain** | Every secondary has to be a recognisable variant of it, and you need it to check you aren't duplicating something they already own |
| 2 | **Domains they already own** (including parked and previously-used ones) | Near-duplicates of an owned domain are the most common wasted purchase. Also: a previously-burnt domain must not be recycled quietly |
| 3 | **How many domains** | Don't guess. Run `playbooks/sizing-calculator` from the monthly goal or the contacts × steps ÷ deadline — the answer is usually larger than people expect |
| 4 | **Vertical / motion** — cold outbound, newsletter, events, or enterprise/ABM | Changes the naming register. Enterprise buyers read `-hq` and `-team` variants as fine; a newsletter list does not want an outreach-shaped domain |
| 5 | **Anything the client will refuse** | Legal, trademark, or a competitor's near-name. Cheaper to ask than to un-buy |

Items 1 and 2 are the two inputs that have been supplied by hand on every build so far. Ask for them up front rather than discovering them at purchase time.

Ideate a clean list of sending domains and get them bought safely, so a domain is never flagged *before it sends a single email*. Numbers live in `{SKILL_BASE}/resources/reference.md` §4, §5, §9; vendors in `{SKILL_BASE}/resources/approved-vendors.md`.

**Why the name and the purchase pattern decide this.** A domain's *name* and *how it was bought* can get it blocklisted before it ever sends. A 2026 longitudinal study of ~1.52 million malicious domains (Mashood & Nabeel) found the tell-tale abuse signals are exactly the ones a careless cold-email setup produces: fresh domains (median flagged age 60 days), bulk purchases from one registrar on one day (**77.9%** of abusive domains sat in a single registrar+date batch), a handful of over-used registrars, and cheap TLDs. Domain sourcing, not delisting, is where deliverability is won or lost.

---

## Part 1, The naming rules (corrected 2026)

**Core rule: tie every domain to the brand name, never to a sales pitch.**

**DO**
- Keep the **brand word** (or a very close variant) in every domain.
- Short, professional, easy to say out loud.
- `.com` first, then `.co` as a fallback.

**DON'T**
- ❌ **Prefixes** `go / get / try / meet`, they read as bulk-outreach and combosquatting-style stacking, a documented abuse pattern.
- ❌ Hyphens or numbers.
- ❌ Cheap TLDs `.top / .xyz / .cc` (and avoid `.io / .ai / .net` for cold).
- ❌ Sales/pitch, money, urgency, authority, or security words: `leads, automation, scale, deals, offers, wealth, cash, earn, payout, free, promo, winner, secure, verify`.

If a word promises money, creates urgency, implies authority, touches account security, or sounds like a pitch, it does not go in a domain.

> **Naming is the default, not a hard lock.** Brand-tied naming is the standard. The GTM / account owner may deliberately choose a different route (e.g. buying aged, generic-named domains, see Part 3) as a trade-off; that's an owner decision, not a rule violation.

> **Newsletter/event domains are the one exception.** For opt-in newsletter or event sends (not cold), brand-oriented descriptors are fine (e.g. `brandwebinars`, `brandevents`). This sub-skill is about **cold** sending domains, keep those to the brand word alone.

---

## Part 2, The ideation prompt

Use in Claude when generating a candidate list:

> Act as an expert cold-email deliverability strategist. Generate sending-domain candidates for **[brand]**, whose primary domain is **[brand.com]**.
> 1. Visit the site; summarize what the company actually does (industry, product category) in one line.
> 2. Keep **every** candidate tied to the brand word. Do **not** add prefixes (go/get/try/meet), hyphens, or numbers.
> 3. Prefer `.com`, then `.co`. Never suggest `.top/.xyz/.cc/.io/.ai/.net`.
> 4. Exclude names containing sales/money/urgency/authority/security words.
> 5. Exclude any domain we already own or a confusing near-duplicate.
> 6. Return 2× the number needed (some won't be available), each with the TLD and a one-word reason it's on-brand.

**Good (brand = Growth Today, growthtoday.com):** `growthtoday.co`, `growthtodaygtm.com`, `growthtodaygtm.co`.
**Reject:** `GrowthMarketingExperts.com` (too broad / not the brand), `GTBusinessSolutions.net` (.net + pitch), `TryGrowthNow.org` (prefix + not the brand + .org).

---

## Part 3, The buy (ScaledMail spreads it, we check the spread)

**The fingerprint to avoid.** The 2026 malicious-domains study found **77.9%** of abusive domains belong to a single (registrar, creation-date) bulk batch, and a small set of registrars plus cheap TLDs (`.top/.xyz/.cc`) dominate abuse. Buying many domains at once, from one registrar, on one day looks *identical to that* to the filters, legitimacy doesn't save you.

**How we buy (via an approved purchasing vendor, see `{SKILL_BASE}/resources/approved-vendors.md`):**
- Buy across **multiple registrars**, spread across **multiple days**, staying at **max 4 domains per registrar per day**.
  - **Batch size sets the calendar.** The cap is 4 per registrar per day, so the real constraint is
    how many registrars are in play at once. A 30–50 domain batch is 8–13 registrar-days: across a
    dozen registrars that's a single day, on one registrar it's nearly two weeks. A 150-domain batch
    is 38 registrar-days. Ask ScaledMail how wide they're spreading before you promise a date.
- Spread DNS across **multiple Cloudflare accounts** (no single hub-and-spoke footprint).
- In practice ScaledMail turns a normal batch around in **~1 day to buy + ~1 day to configure**, because they spread it across enough registrars to stay inside the cap.
- **Duties split: ScaledMail buys the domains and connects the inboxes. Growth Today keeps name research and verification.** We no longer place the orders ourselves.
- **ScaledMail is already spreading purchases across registrars and dates** (confirmed Aug 2026), and also spreads DNS across multiple Cloudflare accounts. So this is a **spot-check on delivery**, not a gap to close: pull WHOIS on the delivered batch and confirm the spread landed.
- Our visibility is public info only (WHOIS, DNS, registration dates), enough to verify the spread actually landed.

**Aged domains, owner's call.** Pre-aged domains come from specialized, pricier providers and usually have generic (off-brand) names. By default we **age our own** via the **> 30-day + warmup gate** (`reference.md` §5) rather than buy aged. The GTM / account owner may choose to buy aged domains as a deliberate trade-off (faster reputation vs. higher cost and off-brand naming).

**Legacy domains:** confirm older domains follow the same multi-registrar / multi-Cloudflare spread; if they don't, flag them for rotation.

---

## Part 4, Hand-off to provisioning

Once purchased, the domain goes to **the provisioning sub-skill** for mailboxes + DNS/auth. Two things must be true before provisioning: the destination will be **masking or a real landing page (never a bare redirect)**, and the domain will not carry links/tracking in cold sends.

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## ✅ BUY CHECKLIST (copy-paste per batch)

```
NAMING
[ ] Every candidate contains the brand word
[ ] No prefixes (go/get/try/meet), no hyphens, no numbers
[ ] .com (or .co) only, no .top/.xyz/.cc/.io/.ai/.net
[ ] No sales/money/urgency/authority/security words
[ ] No duplicates or near-duplicates of owned domains
[ ] 2× the needed count generated (availability buffer)

PURCHASE (spread - ScaledMail does this; GT spot-checks)
[ ] Split across multiple registrars
[ ] Spread across multiple DAYS (not hours)
[ ] Max 4 domains per registrar per day
[ ] DNS spread across multiple Cloudflare accounts
[ ] Aged-domain choice confirmed with GTM/account owner (default = age our own)
[ ] Ordered by ScaledMail; GT kept name research + verification only

VERIFY (public footprint - GT's spot-check on ScaledMail)
[ ] WHOIS shows different registrars across the batch
[ ] Creation dates staggered (not all same day/registrar)
[ ] Destination will be masking / real landing page, NOT a bare 301/302 (GT runs no client redirects today - confirm, don't assume)
[ ] Batch logged for the > 30-day age-before-link gate
[ ] Handed to the provisioning sub-skill
```

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*Created by [Growth Today](https://www.growthtoday.co), the AI-native GTM engineering firm. Maintained by [Brigitta Ruha](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brigittaruha/). More open Claude Skills for go-to-market teams: https://www.growthtoday.co/claude-skills*