We’ve talked a lot about the from line recently including the too vague ones or those that contain the dreaded “donotreply” address. Why is this element of your email marketing so critical? Think of your email as if it were a direct mail piece: the from name and subject line are the envelope and the message content and subsequent landing page are the marketing materials inside. If your envelope isn’t compelling, or looks untrustworthy, it may not get opened. If it doesn’t get opened, you just threw good marketing money out the window.
Here are three basic rules of thumb when it comes to crafting your from line:
1) Keep It Short & Sweet. Some marketers go overboard in an attempt to market within their from line. This can result in from names that are way too long and get cut off in the recipient’s inbox view. Case in point: I subscribe to MarketingProfs.com’s e-newsletters on best practices and industry discussions. Every day, they send me a message with the from name of “Get to the Point: Email Marketing (MarketingProfs)” How much of that do you think I actually see in my inbox? Answer: this much. If the point of including “(MarketingProfs)” in the from is to help with inbox recognition, it’s not working here. Perhaps they’d be better off using plain old “MarketingProfs” as their from, or reversing the order a bit, like “MarketingProfs: Get to the Point” – that way, the most important/recognizable part is at the beginning of the line, and the less meaningful or relevant words follow. (PS, I also recommend this “important words first” rule for subject lines.)
2) Think Externally, Not Internally. A vague or internal name as your from doesn’t do your recipients much good. Too often I see from names of “Shipping Dept.” or “Customer Service.” How meaningful are those names to your audience? If you have multiple departments or brands sending out messages, define them clearly and cleanly. Netflix and American Airlines both do pretty well at this, using from names like “Netflix Shipping,” “Netflix Receiving,” and “Netflix Service” or “AA NetSAAver Fares” or “American Airlines AAdvantage Program” (“Program” usually gets truncated though, but that doesn’t hurt too much). This helps me recognize who they are, and also what I can expect to see in the message.
3) Who Do You Think You Are? If you are using a person’s name (perhaps your own) as your from, take a long hard look at your audience. Do they ALL know who you are? Perhaps a good number do, but what about new subscribers? Think also about how you interact with your own personal inbox. Do you open messages from people whose names you don’t recognize? Unless you’re a celebrity or your subscribers are in fact all people who know and love you, this may not be the best strategy for your organization. However, if you’re in a niche business and your subscriber community is a tight knit one, this could improve your open rates.
The bottom line on each of these rules is you have to test to find out what works best for your organization. Set up an A|B split on from names and compare your results. Take the winner and stack it up against a third variant. Test, test and retest again. Let us know in the comments below what works, and what doesn’t – one marketer’s failure can be another marketer’s gain.
Julie Waite
Account Manager at Bronto
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