8 ms·

Startups, Fix Your "From" Field

165 points by jazzychad 15y ago

dmils4 15y ago
Right up there with fixing your "From" field is using spell check on your blog posts. :0)
- jazzychad 15y ago
  I agree. I admit I'm a terrible speller. Perhaps you could tell me what I misspelled?
  - dmils4 15y ago
    Ha, sorry. I was just nitpicking to nitpick. "Here is an exmaple from a new startup whose website I joined yesterday:"
TeamAqua 15y ago
I also wish that startups would use a bit more "personable" email address. Emails from donotreply@what.ever or invalid@examp.le just look odd. Instead, the reply-to email should alias to your help email address, to simplify sending requests for help, or just sending comments and feedback.
- bjxrn 15y ago
  I don't know if it's a general EU directive, but this is becoming a legal requirement in some European countries (identifiable sender name, must be possible to reply to email).
- RossM 15y ago
  I've always found it weird that email - a two-way system supposed to be analogous to letters - has so many occurrences of noreply@example.com. I wonder what percentage of emails end up in these unmonitored mailboxes.
  - lbotos 15y ago
    I think it comes from the parallels to physical bulk mailing. I usually get sales flyers, various "junk" mail and the not-as-often "we've moved funds from one account to another because a check didn't clear" from my bank. I equate most of these to something that would come from a no-reply email. Also, I do believe it's possible to have a send only mailbox that won't even accept incoming mail. It would drop the mail on the floor without you knowing.
badclient 15y ago
In some cases it may be intentional. I am unlikely to open an email from startup X if months ago I reached a negative judgement about startup X. On the other hand, if the From field only says "John" or "notification", I may open the email even if just for a second. Also, note the branding value of having your company name in the from field. I receive emails from some sites that I no longer visit. Yet, just seeing their name day in and day out in my email makes me remember their name/brand.
- lotharbot 15y ago
  > "if the From field only says "John" or "notification", I may open the email even if just for a second." I'm completely opposite. If I don't recognize the name in the From field and the company name isn't in the subject line, it gets categorized as SPAM.
  - jazzychad 15y ago
    Ditto. My inbox is an email wasteland. I don't have any spare time to bother with emails that I don't recognize on the first pass.
  - badclient 15y ago
    So, if you meet ten John Schmidts at a conference and 7 of them email you, you remember all their names? Or you just hit delete?
    - rhizome 15y ago
      If I was one of those John Schmidts, I would mention the conference. I think this is just a question of providing context in a world of email inundation.
verelo 15y ago
This is a great post, redmine ticket has been submitted, its something we're guilty of. I completely agree that a name is important, and to reiterate what others are saying here I also agree that email addresses you cant reply to are useless. Thanks for sharing, the internet is a better place for it :P
darxius 15y ago
The important point this post makes is the issue of an ambiguous subject line. I had never thought of it before, but not putting a company name in the subject makes the email look much less credible and increases the chance of me flagging it as spam. Thank you for this enlightening post.
rmorrison 15y ago
Related: I don't understand why companies use a "noreply@..." email address. Why not make it easy for a customer to give you feedback?
- dustingetz 15y ago
  a better question: Why don't companies want customer feedback via email? Once you figure out the right question, you can probably figure the answer out on your own.
  - Ecio78 15y ago
    My employer is not a startup (financial bank) but we use a technical "noreply" account for sending automated mail to our users (no external services, they're sent through our mailserver). We use a noreply because the same account is used for different kind of notifications (to clients, to financial advisors, to internal users, to external parties etc..) and we have different inbound mail accounts for assisting them (and actually the main channels for communicating with are web trouble ticketing and toll free number, mail is not the suggested one). Having said that, I must admit that the whole system is quite basic and not integrated as you'd expect for serious problem tracking (ideally we should use something that can keep track a problem through different channels, integrating web, mail and phone ticketing). N.B. one problem is that unfortunately there are tons of people who cant read and dont understand that if you write from a "noreply@domain" account and write in the mail "THIS IS A SERVICE ACCOUNT PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MAIL", you're actually supposed not to do it
    - flurp 15y ago
      This might be your point (didn't quite get your point) but that's exactly why you should fix this. You actually have separate inbound and outbound channels. It's rediciously simple to change those outbound channels' email addresses so that a direct reply will be sent to the corresponding inbound channel. It doesn't matter if the system is basic and uses a smtp server or if it uses a hot new email routing service. It's about setting the correct from address in your systems code.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Also, don't send me emails unless I explicitly opted in or there is a fire I should know about.
prawn 15y ago
In the examples of subject lines including a company name, I would only recommend: Company Name: Check out this new feature Enables people to easily find something by sorting alphabetically in case they cannot remember the company name in full. I do the same thing with downloadable files. My Downloads folder is full of things like Summer-menu.pdf or menu.pdf when I'd rather have Celcius_Summer_menu.pdf.
- devicenull 15y ago
  Or even worse, 'Setup.exe'
  - snotrockets 15y ago
    That's easy! It's cygwin's :-)
tedyoung 15y ago
Also bad is when the emailing service that you use creates new and random "From" addresses for every single email. That means if I want to see images from you in Gmail or Outlook, I have to do it for _every_ single email I get from you. I'm looking at you, Twitter, with your n-grqlbhat=tznvy.pbz-302c1@postmaster.twitter.com "from" addresses and anyone using whatever service results in "EAT Club [support=myeatclub.com@mail13.us2.mcsv.net]".
- there 15y ago
  That is done to track bounces. If an automated email is sent to an address, but that address is setup to forward once or twice and bounces somewhere along that path, by the time the bounce gets back to the original (automated) sender, it may otherwise be impossible to figure out what the original address was. With unique addresses like that, bounces can be tracked.
  - kijin 15y ago
    Doesn't a bounce usually include the Message-ID of the original message, along with a lot of other cruft? I can understand small teams doing this as a quick fix, but companies like Twitter should have no trouble keeping a large dict of Message-ID => account ID.
    - cflee 15y ago
      'Usually' but definitely not always. Account ID is also usually at the application level, while Message-ID originates lower, at the mailserver level. When the app posts something off to the mailserver, how is it supposed to get the Message-ID back? At least with the cruft, bounces are just handed back to the app to deal with.
      - kijin 15y ago
        An app can generate its own Message-IDs. MTAs will respect them.
yesimahuman 15y ago
One I've noticed people using recently and that I use is "Firstname from Company" as the name. Seems to work well, since it's both personable and clear what you are emailing about.
mmuro 15y ago
This shouldn't just apply to Startups. It should apply to most emails sent by a server.
mgkimsal 15y ago
On a related note (email addresses), how about we standardize email address regex/verifications to accept "Foo Bar" <foobar@yahoo.com> formats? I'm tired of grabbing an address, hitting 'copy', then not being able to paste it anywhere without having to essentially retype just the stuff between < >. Apple Mail is bad about the 'copy', but I've noticed it with some other apps, and nothing lets me paste in the full version. :/
- cflee 15y ago
  One annoying thing is that some programs want you to separate different email addresses with semicolons and some with commas. It's another hassle to translate between those two conventions.
- bostonvaulter2 15y ago
  Yes, that irritates me all the time as well. Is there any sort of standard jQuery form that can parse that into just the email address on the backend?
AppSpyre 15y ago
This is definitely a serious issue especially for startups. But, for those of you who send those emails using PHP, here is a basic article on sending them the right way. http://appspyre.com/discussions/php-development/sending-emails-with-php http://appspyre.com/discussions/php-development/sending-emai...
dennisgorelik 15y ago
We are sending automated emails mostly from noreply@ address, but I still read everything that comes to noreply@. We are sending ~300K+ emails per month. Reading bounces (and replies) is quite manageable. The worst offenders are ending up in spam folder anyway.
c4urself 15y ago
I admit I didn't think of this and it's a really easy fix. In the case of Django: DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = "My Company Name <somegirlname@mycompany.com>" is _all_ you need to do :)
gmansoor 15y ago
I like LinkedIn way "Person Name via LinkedIn"<...@linkedin.com>. This shows person name and name of service.
ubuntuftw 15y ago
This is great. I'm sorry to say that my startup was guilty of this as well. Not anymore though. Thanks for your article.

165 points by jazzychad 15y ago

dmils4 15y ago

Right up there with fixing your "From" field is using spell check on your blog posts. :0)

jazzychad 15y ago
I agree. I admit I'm a terrible speller. Perhaps you could tell me what I misspelled?
- dmils4 15y ago
  Ha, sorry. I was just nitpicking to nitpick. "Here is an exmaple from a new startup whose website I joined yesterday:"

TeamAqua 15y ago

I also wish that startups would use a bit more "personable" email address. Emails from donotreply@what.ever or invalid@examp.le just look odd. Instead, the reply-to email should alias to your help email address, to simplify sending requests for help, or just sending comments and feedback.

bjxrn 15y ago
I don't know if it's a general EU directive, but this is becoming a legal requirement in some European countries (identifiable sender name, must be possible to reply to email).
RossM 15y ago
I've always found it weird that email - a two-way system supposed to be analogous to letters - has so many occurrences of noreply@example.com. I wonder what percentage of emails end up in these unmonitored mailboxes.
- lbotos 15y ago
  I think it comes from the parallels to physical bulk mailing. I usually get sales flyers, various "junk" mail and the not-as-often "we've moved funds from one account to another because a check didn't clear" from my bank. I equate most of these to something that would come from a no-reply email. Also, I do believe it's possible to have a send only mailbox that won't even accept incoming mail. It would drop the mail on the floor without you knowing.

badclient 15y ago

In some cases it may be intentional. I am unlikely to open an email from startup X if months ago I reached a negative judgement about startup X. On the other hand, if the From field only says "John" or "notification", I may open the email even if just for a second. Also, note the branding value of having your company name in the from field. I receive emails from some sites that I no longer visit. Yet, just seeing their name day in and day out in my email makes me remember their name/brand.

lotharbot 15y ago
> "if the From field only says "John" or "notification", I may open the email even if just for a second." I'm completely opposite. If I don't recognize the name in the From field and the company name isn't in the subject line, it gets categorized as SPAM.
- jazzychad 15y ago
  Ditto. My inbox is an email wasteland. I don't have any spare time to bother with emails that I don't recognize on the first pass.
- badclient 15y ago
  So, if you meet ten John Schmidts at a conference and 7 of them email you, you remember all their names? Or you just hit delete?
  - rhizome 15y ago
    If I was one of those John Schmidts, I would mention the conference. I think this is just a question of providing context in a world of email inundation.

verelo 15y ago

This is a great post, redmine ticket has been submitted, its something we're guilty of. I completely agree that a name is important, and to reiterate what others are saying here I also agree that email addresses you cant reply to are useless. Thanks for sharing, the internet is a better place for it :P

darxius 15y ago

The important point this post makes is the issue of an ambiguous subject line. I had never thought of it before, but not putting a company name in the subject makes the email look much less credible and increases the chance of me flagging it as spam. Thank you for this enlightening post.

rmorrison 15y ago

Related: I don't understand why companies use a "noreply@..." email address. Why not make it easy for a customer to give you feedback?

dustingetz 15y ago
a better question: Why don't companies want customer feedback via email? Once you figure out the right question, you can probably figure the answer out on your own.
- Ecio78 15y ago
  My employer is not a startup (financial bank) but we use a technical "noreply" account for sending automated mail to our users (no external services, they're sent through our mailserver). We use a noreply because the same account is used for different kind of notifications (to clients, to financial advisors, to internal users, to external parties etc..) and we have different inbound mail accounts for assisting them (and actually the main channels for communicating with are web trouble ticketing and toll free number, mail is not the suggested one). Having said that, I must admit that the whole system is quite basic and not integrated as you'd expect for serious problem tracking (ideally we should use something that can keep track a problem through different channels, integrating web, mail and phone ticketing). N.B. one problem is that unfortunately there are tons of people who cant read and dont understand that if you write from a "noreply@domain" account and write in the mail "THIS IS A SERVICE ACCOUNT PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MAIL", you're actually supposed not to do it
  - flurp 15y ago
    This might be your point (didn't quite get your point) but that's exactly why you should fix this. You actually have separate inbound and outbound channels. It's rediciously simple to change those outbound channels' email addresses so that a direct reply will be sent to the corresponding inbound channel. It doesn't matter if the system is basic and uses a smtp server or if it uses a hot new email routing service. It's about setting the correct from address in your systems code.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

Also, don't send me emails unless I explicitly opted in or there is a fire I should know about.

prawn 15y ago

In the examples of subject lines including a company name, I would only recommend: Company Name: Check out this new feature Enables people to easily find something by sorting alphabetically in case they cannot remember the company name in full. I do the same thing with downloadable files. My Downloads folder is full of things like Summer-menu.pdf or menu.pdf when I'd rather have Celcius_Summer_menu.pdf.

devicenull 15y ago
Or even worse, 'Setup.exe'
- snotrockets 15y ago
  That's easy! It's cygwin's :-)

tedyoung 15y ago

Also bad is when the emailing service that you use creates new and random "From" addresses for every single email. That means if I want to see images from you in Gmail or Outlook, I have to do it for _every_ single email I get from you. I'm looking at you, Twitter, with your n-grqlbhat=tznvy.pbz-302c1@postmaster.twitter.com "from" addresses and anyone using whatever service results in "EAT Club [support=myeatclub.com@mail13.us2.mcsv.net]".

there 15y ago
That is done to track bounces. If an automated email is sent to an address, but that address is setup to forward once or twice and bounces somewhere along that path, by the time the bounce gets back to the original (automated) sender, it may otherwise be impossible to figure out what the original address was. With unique addresses like that, bounces can be tracked.
- kijin 15y ago
  Doesn't a bounce usually include the Message-ID of the original message, along with a lot of other cruft? I can understand small teams doing this as a quick fix, but companies like Twitter should have no trouble keeping a large dict of Message-ID => account ID.
  - cflee 15y ago
    'Usually' but definitely not always. Account ID is also usually at the application level, while Message-ID originates lower, at the mailserver level. When the app posts something off to the mailserver, how is it supposed to get the Message-ID back? At least with the cruft, bounces are just handed back to the app to deal with.
    - kijin 15y ago
      An app can generate its own Message-IDs. MTAs will respect them.

yesimahuman 15y ago

One I've noticed people using recently and that I use is "Firstname from Company" as the name. Seems to work well, since it's both personable and clear what you are emailing about.

mmuro 15y ago

This shouldn't just apply to Startups. It should apply to most emails sent by a server.

mgkimsal 15y ago

On a related note (email addresses), how about we standardize email address regex/verifications to accept "Foo Bar" <foobar@yahoo.com> formats? I'm tired of grabbing an address, hitting 'copy', then not being able to paste it anywhere without having to essentially retype just the stuff between < >. Apple Mail is bad about the 'copy', but I've noticed it with some other apps, and nothing lets me paste in the full version. :/

cflee 15y ago
One annoying thing is that some programs want you to separate different email addresses with semicolons and some with commas. It's another hassle to translate between those two conventions.
bostonvaulter2 15y ago
Yes, that irritates me all the time as well. Is there any sort of standard jQuery form that can parse that into just the email address on the backend?

AppSpyre 15y ago

This is definitely a serious issue especially for startups. But, for those of you who send those emails using PHP, here is a basic article on sending them the right way. http://appspyre.com/discussions/php-development/sending-emails-with-php http://appspyre.com/discussions/php-development/sending-emai...

dennisgorelik 15y ago

We are sending automated emails mostly from noreply@ address, but I still read everything that comes to noreply@. We are sending ~300K+ emails per month. Reading bounces (and replies) is quite manageable. The worst offenders are ending up in spam folder anyway.

c4urself 15y ago

I admit I didn't think of this and it's a really easy fix. In the case of Django: DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = "My Company Name <somegirlname@mycompany.com>" is _all_ you need to do :)

gmansoor 15y ago

I like LinkedIn way "Person Name via LinkedIn"<...@linkedin.com>. This shows person name and name of service.

ubuntuftw 15y ago

This is great. I'm sorry to say that my startup was guilty of this as well. Not anymore though. Thanks for your article.