Why your sender address matters

As email marketers, we rely on our Friendly From to represent us within an inbox. Frequently, Friendly From’s take the form of

• [Business Name]

• Naomi from [Business Name]

• [Business Name] CYBER MONDAY (this one seems recent as of this year)

• [Business Name] Magazine.

Benefits of using a Friendly From as a business range from one to many, and include establishing brand affinity, developing trust, and being clear and direct with who the sender is.

The negatives as a recipient on relying on a Friendly From to determine if you trust an email or not often are associated with potential spoofing, and fraud. We all know about those phishing emails that show [CEO Name] and ask you to go purchase 10, $100 Apple gift cards… right? It is most likely the Friendly From that is able to swindle so many recipients into believing the sender is legitimate.

Take a look at a variety of Friendly From names that are in my inbox currently:

Behind every Friendly From, is the sending address of the business or brand, or alternatively, a fraudulent party.

See above, the friendly from of SKIMS, is SKIMS, and their sender address is noreply@skims.com.

Now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, why does your sender address matter if you can lean on a Friendly From to represent you?

What happens if Gmail, and other ISP’s remove the functionality of a Friendly From, and only display the sender address?

Lately, there have been whispers of this happening in the email community where Gmail, and Apple Mail are removing the Friendly From name from displaying on various emails.

Spot how emails without a Friendly From appear in inboxes below:

With the above being shown, you can clearly see when the Friendly From is stripped away, the sender address can be left looking bare.

When a brand uses a clear and direct sender address, the recipient is likely more inclined to engage with the email because they will recognize who the brand/business is.

Using a generic sender address can be beneficial if you only send one type of email, but if you are currently leaning on a Friendly From name to differentiate your senders, you might want to consider specifying that on a domain level as well.

If you haven’t thought about this topic before, this could be the time to test out various Friendly From addresses while they still exist!

Transparency is always a win in email marketing! What do you think?