Comprehensive data collection with Segment’s Custom Domain

In this privacy-conscious era, most browsers offer enhanced privacy features for their end-users across their platforms (desktop, mobile, etc). On one hand, these features offer end-users more control over how their data is used by third-parties. But on the other hand, these features often hinder your marketing efforts by blocking your ability to gain a holistic view of your business’ most valuable information: your customers’ first-party data.  

Enter Twilio Segment’s latest AdTech release, Custom Domain, available to all Business Tier customers at no additional cost. Custom Domain allows you to reclaim control over your first-party data, enabling a more complete understanding of your customers, for more robust profiles, more accurate attribution, and ultimately greater ROAS.

 But don’t just take our word for it–Segment customers using Custom Domain experienced a median increase of 108% in API volume and 53% increase in monthly total users (MTU). In other words, by increasing the amount of tracked data in their workspace, they were able to build richer, more comprehensive advertising audiences for enhanced targeting.

Under the hood, Custom Domain is a fully-managed service run by Segment that allows you to configure a first-party subdomain over https to track event requests through your domain (like cdp.mydomain.com), in place of Segment’s default domain (of segment.com). 

To help you navigate the privacy landscape, Twilio Segment also offers Consent Enforcement, to ensure your customer consent preferences are enforced  when collecting and sharing data with third party destinations. Consent Enforcement works in tandem with Custom Domain, and fully integrates with your consent flows to enforce end-user consent.

Already on Business Tier and interested in using Custom Domain? Follow our onboarding process below:

1. Choose a subdomain for Segment, for example, cdp.mydomain.com 
2. Login to the Segment App and Contact Support, from the dropdown under your avatar, Select “Other” as the topic and provide the following information:
   1. Subdomain Name
   2. Sources Names
   3. If you have Content Policy enabled
   4. If this needs to span multiple workspaces, provide all workspace slugs and Source Names in the “Description”. 
3. Segment will provide a list of nameservers to add to your DNS
4. Once you have added nameservers records on your DNS, Segment will verify, spin up the required infrastructure on Segment’s end and will provide you with two custom domains, for: 
   1. Tracking API like api.cdp.mydomain.com
   2. CDN like analytics.cdp.mydomain.com 
5. When ready, update your Javascript snippet, available on your Source Overview page, on your websites to load analytics.js from your Custom Domain. Custom Domain isn't limited to Analytics.js; it's also compatible with Server libraries.

If you’re not currently on Business Tier, but interested in Custom Domain please contact our sales team for assistance with upgrading.

Note: We recommend you check in with your IT/Infrastructure team if they can update your DNS for Segment. Alternatively, Segment also offers Custom Proxy to help navigate this data collection challenge another way.