When you’re working on a big email marketing campaign, most of the focus is on the content of the email itself — as it should be. Next is the subject line, which is a big factor in open rates. What’s often overlooked, though, is the name and address that your email is “from”.
While I generally think of the subject line as being the most important element to get people to open an email, the folks at Campaign Monitor have said that “Studies on email open rates have found that trusting the sender is the single most important factor in whether an email is opened or not.” If the “from” field is suspicious, nothing else matters because the email will never be opened.
Who is it from?
There’s not a single right answer on what to use. There are two general directions you can go with: the name of the company, or the name of a human. In most cases, the human name will perform better.
Of that, though, you have a variety of choices for people to use:
- The company founder
- The marketing director
- The customer service rep that many clients know
Finding the right person is up to you, and it may take some time. If you’re not sure, run some A/B testing with different “from” names to see which performs best. As long as you use a real person (and never ever use “noreply”), you should have favorable results.
