NoReply Email Address: Best Practices For Your Email Strategy

In this post, our friend Chris Arrendale, CEO and founder of Inbox Pros, explains what a no-reply address is and why sending your marketing emails using a reply-to address is always the best idea.

Let me tell you a short, sad story.

For months, I have tried to stop a brand from sending me these emails (we don’t do naming or shaming here). But every time I try to contact them, I get back an automated reply that says that my email failed to be delivered. Oh, the wonders of no-reply email addresses. You can imagine my frustration… Now I understand how my mom would feel when she asked me to tidy up my room. It was like talking to a brick wall.

There is a misconception that sending from a noreply email address is the best way to go to avoid being flooded with email replies. If you’re not familiar, you’ve likely seen this type of sender address before – most of the time it looks like this: noreply@domain.com.

What is a noreply email address?

A noreply email is an email address that is not monitored and blocks customers from replying. However, it can confuse and frustrate customers if their replies go unanswered or worse – bounce.  Let’s explore why it’s never a good idea to use this type of account for your email marketing campaigns and what you should use instead.

Why you shouldn’t use a noreply address

While noreply addresses are tempting, there are a few reasons why you shouldn’t use one. Here are the most important things to consider.

A noreply email address decreases deliverability and increases spam

Certain ISPs, network spam filters, and customers’ personal email security settings are set up to send noreply email to the junk folder. This will decrease your open rates and overall deliverability rates, and will increase your chances of landing in the spam folder. Being inboxed less leads to lower possible conversions, specially when sending blast emails.

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Also looking at email trends from a broader sense, 53% of email is opened on mobile devices. To accommodate for the smaller screen, many email clients set their inboxes on mobile devices to just show a preview of the sender and your email address as well. As a consumer, would you open an email with a noreply email address? You’re more likely to feel like a company is unapproachable.

A noreply address can hurt your customer experience

When a customer replies to an email, it’s because they have something to share. They could have a support question, a comment about your product or service, or just some constructive feedback that can help a brand with its marketing efforts. Adding your contact information to your email campaigns will help direct some of these comments, but it’s likely many of your customers still opt for just replying to your campaigns. If they get an auto-reply notification telling them the email can’t be delivered, how do you think they’ll feel?

Post-GDPR, it is also more important than ever to take the time to evaluate whether you should use a no-reply address for your marketing campaigns. How can you expect your subscribers to contact you to claim their rights if you don’t allow them to do so? An autoresponder is just not good enough.

Swapping out the noreply for a reply-to address

Most ISPs do not allow email recipients to add noreply emails to their address books. If a recipient can’t add you to their address book, you’re more likely to be flagged as spam and sent to the junk folder. It is also much more likely for subscribers to hit the spam button if they can’t reply back requesting removal of their email address. I’ve seen cases where customers unsubscribed from some of their favorite brands because noreply emails addresses were not being monitored.

Another interesting point to remember is that it shows credibility to ISPs when recipients engage with your email, replying to your email being one of those cases. Safe sender privileges include bypassing some of an ISPs mail filters and delivering straight to the inbox.

Best practices when sending email replies

Hopefully, by now you understand the importance of adding a reply-to address to your marketing and transactional emails. To help you implement yours, here are some best practices you should keep in mind.

Create a dedicated email address for email responses

Setting up a dedicated reply-to address will help you filter and follow up on customer feedback. Create an email distro and ensure relevant team members, like support agents or community managers, have access to the address.

Sometimes, that dedicated email address might be connected to support software tools like Zendesk, which allow companies to create a generic support email address for incoming support tickets.

Set up filters for specific autoresponders

Every company’s reply-to address usually receives an influx of out-of-office messages and other automated responses after a campaign is sent. To avoid these types of messages clogging your dedicated email address, filter out messages containing keywords such as “delivery notification” or “out of office” in the subject line or body of the email.

Keep an eye on the unsubscribes

As mentioned before, some people skip over the unsubscribe link and reply directly to your email asking to be removed. These customers bypass the unsubscribe link because they’re afraid it will only flood their mailbox with more emails. Make sure you honor these requests promptly and suppress the email addresses from your list. The last thing you want is for these recipients to feel like they are being unheard and in frustration, mark your email as spam.

Also, monitor your reply email address if you’re sending to a domain where the recipient never opted into your email program (something you shouldn’t be doing anyway). The mail administrator (at the recipient’s domain) may try to contact you at your reply email address. This is a crucial moment because if you don’t respond back, the email recipient may report you to a blacklist and/or try to contact the Email Service Provider (ESP) or Data Center to complain about your email.

Build the best conversation

A reply-to email address is essential to any email marketing program. It nurtures the conversation between you and your customers.

Many B2B senders will use a sales person’s email address as the reply-to to keep the conversation personal and on a more one-to-one level, while B2C senders may use a general reply-to address that may be monitored by multiple email marketing professionals. Both scenarios build the confidence that when the recipient replies to the marketing email, the email will be received and followed up on.

Provide support throughout the customer journey

Often, customers reply to emails because they have a support request or concern, or there’s probably something in your email they want to know more about. When planning your campaigns, think about the kind of questions users might have and proactively offer resources that help answer them.

This will be especially important during the onboarding period. Including links to additional resources, FAQ pages, technical documentation, or your help center will help reduce the number of responses your reply-to address gets and improve your customer experience overall.

Summing up: Say NO to noreply email addresses

To sum it up, the noreply email address should never be used to send from. It tells your customers that you don’t really care what they have to say.  You’re also missing out on an important opportunity to collect feedback and learn how to improve your product and also it’s not the best way to grow your email list.

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This blog post was written by Chris Arrendale, the CEO and Founder of Inbox Pros. Chris has more than 13 years of experience in the technology and software industry and has worked directly with many different ISPs, webmail providers, spam filter providers, blacklists, and partners to resolve email deliverability and privacy issues. He works with many leading organizations and enterprises to ensure regulatory compliance and maximum deliverability across all systems.