Email marketing places a lot of emphasis on the wording of the subject line, whereas the sender address is often neglected. It serves as an identifier and when correctly chosen, it can transmit trust and personality. The wrong address however can cause damage, e.g. the classification as Spam. We have compiled 7 tips for the correct sender address.
1. Use Company or Brand Names
A marketing email should always be sent in the name of the company or brand. A familiar company or brand name creates trust. The user can directly relate to the email and knows what to expect. Every relevant email, which is received positively by a user, pays more into this trust. You should stick to only the company or brand name as combinations, such as “@companyname-customerservice.tld” or “@companyname-promotion.tld” are often used by spammers and may arise suspicion with many users. In any case, you should avoid freemail addresses, such as “@gmx” or “@gmail”. Commercial messages from a freemail account appear highly dubious.
2. Avoid Cryptic Character Combinations
Cryptic character combinations, such as “xyz123@company.tld” or “qwertz451@9i3e.tld” are a no-go. Not only do they not convey a message, but for most users they are a definite sign of spam.
3. Show Openness for Dialogue
Infamous, but unfortunately used even by otherwise professionally communicating companies: “no-reply@” addresses. These do not only appear automatic and loveless, they also restrict the user. Email is a medium for dialogue. Users expect that they can answer to an email. Apart from the sender address, you should also avoid notes, such as “This email has been automatically generated. Please do not answer.”
4. Personal Approach in B2B
In B2B, a relationship between sender and recipient often already exists, e.g. between the sales/marketing department and the purchase department of a company. Now, this relationship should be transferred to the email dialogue. In order to create trust and suggest interest, you should use a familiar contact as a sender and possibly pick up the existing customer relation in the email. If no business relationship exists, yet, it is still recommendable to choose a sender, who appears a suitable contact for the recipient. When you communicate with board members, for example, your own CEO may be a suitable sender.
5. B2C Informative Design
B2C email marketing should of course also be personal and trustworthy, although individual employees as senders are in most cases not recommendable. An exception may be messages of a particular urgency, which may be sent in the name of a board member known to the target group. Even testimonials can serve as sender addresses, as long as there is a connection between them and the email content. In most cases, however, B2C should have a purely informative character. This means, the sender should reflect type and content of the email, e.g. “Specialoffers@” or “Technical-Newsletter@”.
6. Ensure Consistency
The sender address should have a consistent format. This means, a newsletter should always be sent from the same sender address. Changing sender addresses may confuse users and inhibit the goal of creating trust. Exceptions are possible, when there are different newsletter types, which are clearly distinguishable, e.g. a “regular” newsletter and a newsletter containing only special offers. With different formats (e.g. newsletters vs. transaction emails), you should also use different sender addresses.
7. Test
You should test different sender addresses in order to determine the most effective address, e.g. by using A/B-tests. In order not to compromise the consistency, tests should not be carried out to frequently or with changing addresses.