I really don’t believe that I am writing this post in the never ending spamming social media marketing era. But while we marketers spend lots of time in budgeting, planning and cramping the communication with “call to actions” and “convergence” and “leads”, we sometimes miss the most crucial part “the execution’.
A big media group which is a leader in print has a online recruitment service “brand x”. Even with strong media presence “brand x’ did not create any impact in online recruitment space, so there came a super marketing strategy of creating a entry portal to “brand x” through “category y”. There’s no mention of “brand x’ and its made to appear as if this completely a new service.
These people forgot one thing – that “brand x” is a service and “category y” is just a name and entry point to “brand x’. Brand x is the host of the destination and its who is going to communicate with the user as ‘brand” x. No, wait a minute, they don’t communicate as “brand x” but as “sexy samantha” (no offense to any of the samantha’s but just a fictitious name).
Thumb Rules of Sending Your Company’s Email Messages:
If you are communicating as an employee / person:
The from name should be Your Full Name [yourname@your_company.com]. This mail should not talk to any list, unless all of them form a certain group of cluster and really know you well. For example, from your ID to all your distributors in Mumbai. In case you are using a generic name or sharing the inbox, like pr@your_company.com you must reply with your actual names with proper signatures and designations.
If you are communicating through newsletters / mass mailers:
The from name must be your Brand Name [do-not-reply@your_company.com]. This mail can talk broadly with your customers and must have a working subscribe / unsubscribe module with also an option to land / communicate some where if the users want to know more about the communication of this mail. No matter how much you want to enhance the “open rate” never dilute your brand name by using “sexy samantha” types of email handles.
If you are sending alerts:
Most of the business are done online and much of the communication these days is done through automated systems. In these cases, the right email sender should be selected appropriately on the basis of who will close the loop. From name can be do-not-reply, a team id, a persons id who is responsible for that function, or a feedback ID. Decide on the basis of first two rules.
If you are serving the customers:
The customer service department or the feedback ID or the customer support ID. Remember you are the most unfortunate lot in the whole wide company. Don’t get scared by the responses that you get. Remember just one thing, no one can thank someone anonymous and most of us get pissed off cursing someone faceless. I hope you got your answer on this.