The from line is your branding in the inbox

Website Hosting Tips

Getting people to open your email

Your from line is your company's branding in the inbox. It sparks instant recognition of your business. And since it’s the very first thing subscribers see, it may be the biggest ingredient in getting your emails opened. Getting people to open your email is just the first step. And in today's busy online world, it is becoming trickier to get your emails noticed. But email marketing is one the of the best and most economical ways to promote your business during a difficult economy. Email hosting packages with your web hosting provider make marketing with email easy and cost-efficient. So, let's get started and get your email campaigns shaped up.

Change the from name

While changing the from name should never be done in haste, there are some cases where a change is completely necessary. This change can hugely effect your campaign, so it is vital to have some cautions in place. Let's begin by looking at the email marketing mistakes that are most commonly made.

Email marketing mistakes

The worst mistake marketers make with the "From" line is not to specify a friendly "From" name at all, instead using a "From" address such as "same@bigbrand.com." An email address as "From" line provides poor branding, is harder to recognize and therefore trust, and in an inbox full of well-branded "From" names, simply looks like spam. Check your junk folder and you will see what I am talking about. Although almost any email address is bad as a "From" name, the most heinous of these is the "no-reply@XYZ.com" address. Ouch! Almost any "From" name is better than "no-reply."

When a sender does specify a "From" name, my biggest pet peeve is using a person’s name, or worse several different individual names. Unless that person is your brand, it is likely one of the biggest email mistakes you will ever make. Every day I receive emails from some variation of "Mary Smith"—I have no idea who "Mary Smith" is or what company she is with.

It’s even worse if the company or brand name is so widely known that having a stranger's name attached to it makes it looks suspicious. Think of all those pitches in your junk folder for Viagra, computer software and Rolex watches. Even if you can show you have built up some brand equity or recognition by using a person’s name, what happens when that person leaves? General Mills does not have this problem with Betty Crocker, but your email program will suffer if you’re changing your "From" name every time your "Mary Smith" leaves the company.

If you choose a personal name over an institutional identifier as a way to get your email noticed, you can end up just confusing the recipient. This happens when you change your "From" name to reflect a one-time or occasional change in message content.

An effective "From" name:

• Forms the foundation of your recipients’ trust and email relationship with you.
• Is the email brand they use to recognize whether to ignore, delete or open your messages
• Stands out in the sea of subject-line sameness
• Helps readers find your message if it gets routed to the junk folder
• Differentiates individual message streams such as promotional versus transactional
• Is what the recipient uses to sort or search messages
• Embodies your ability to deliver on the recipient’s expectation of value

The "From" name and subject line clearly go hand in hand. Anybody can write a catchy subject line, but a vague "From" name can doom the email to be deleted unopened or to provoke a spam complaint. The marketers’ challenge now is to get their messages categorized as "Important," not to languish in the "Everything Else" category. Having a highly recognizable, trusted and consistent "From" name is an essential factor in prompting users to mark your messages as "Important."

As with the slogan "Volvo = safe," email marketing professionals recommend that people go with the obvious choice, the one that makes sense and which recipients would expect to see. Then, stick with it to establish instant recognition and trust.