When using an email marketing tool such as Adestra’s Message Focus, you are able to specify exactly what sent address you want the email to be labelled as being broadcasted from. From prevalent industry contacts through to brand names, this gives the marketers the flexibility to use ‘sent from’ addresses that resonate with their audience for improved recognition.

This flexibility can be a blessing but also a burden. If you’re choosing to broadcast as if from someone, over the past 4 years the Adestra team have learnt some valuable lessons.

If you broadcast from someone:

Monitor the inbound email channel

Many individuals believe it is from that person and expect to be able to reply to that person and get a response. In many cases, requests for more information or even orders are sent back into the inbound filters rather than through the channels suggested by your communication. Likewise, recipients often reply with personal messages for that person.

Keep named email contact in the loopIf you are choosing to send from someone, the chances are their name means something to your audience. To this extent, please ask their permission before sending. In many cases they will want to cast their eye over the email content to ensure no defamatory comments are made and that accuracy is ensured.

Do not over-use the same send from address

One client has been broadcasting from the same contact email address for a number of months. Many of their email recipients have added their name to a list of rules upon their inbox, in many cases to move their emails directly to the ‘Deleted Items’ folder.

Likewise, their email address has been stopped by SPAM server settings at certain company’s receiving email server. The net effect of this is that this contact email address can no longer use their own personal account to email industry contacts as they are picked up within these rules.

Ensure they are going to be at your company now and into the future

Building up the reputation of a key expert within your organisation is a worthwhile activity. These opinion leader’s comments and thoughts carry weight. However, if you have been broadcasting from a person for a number of months, and this person leaves your company you will be forced to stop sending from them. By replacing this name you lose the recognition you’d developed

Through Adestra’s Message Focus, you have complete control over who you send your emails as. Across our client base, marketers use:

• Company Names
• Product Names
• Key Contact Names
• Brand Names
• Web Site Addresses
• Customer Service Operations
• Promotion Names e.g. Summer Sale

Adestra would recommend varying the ‘send from’ address for tactical promotions. For regular newsletters, using a consistent product name/branding name is sensible to aid recognition.

Essentially, test, test and test again. Although this phrase is an age old adage but with Adestra’s Message Focus’ reporting tools you can understand what works and what doesn’t. We recommend that you monitor the open rates and learn which sent from address works for your business.

About the author:

Paul Crabtree is presently Marketing Director of Adestra (http://www.adestra.com), a UK based digital marketing agency that specialise in inbound and outbound email, fax and SMS broadcast solutions. Adestra's client portfolio includes many UK based publishers including Janes Information Group, Informa, Lexis Nexis, OUP, Blackwells and others.

Previous to this role, Paul was responsible for heading-up online marketing for Informa Telecoms' publishing division working on a portfolio of reports, newsletters, ad-led vehicles and the industry portal telecoms.com.

Paul will draw on his 5 years of focused experience in working in online marketing for publishers.

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