Your sender name and email address, sometimes referred to as your ‘from’ address, help to identify you to your recipients, so it’s important to choose something professional and easily recognizable to them. Studies on email open rates have found that trusting the sender is the single most important factor in whether an email is opened or not. Because your sender information builds up the trust equation between your subscribers, and both consistency and familiarity are proven to help grow that bond, it’s critical to choose an effective and consistent sender name and email address.

When new accounts are created, the sender information may be blank or populated with account holder’s name and email address, so it’s best to edit the details of your sender information before sending your first campaign.

Important things to consider when selecting your sender name and email

Use a domain that you own

To give your emails the best chance of reaching the inbox, don’t use a free email address, such as an email from Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, Hotmail, or Gmail. Instead, use an email address registered at your organization’s own domain and is easily identifiable as your brand.

When an email is sent through a third-party email service provider (ESP), receiving email servers view free webmail sender addresses as more suspicious than those from custom domains, increasing the chance emails from those addresses will be rejected. This is the case no matter which ESP you use. But don’t worry, we’ll warn you if your sender address could cause a delivery issue.

Authenticate your domain

Many inbox providers, including Gmail and Yahoo, now require that anyone sending from an ESP must send from an authenticated domain. Without DKIM and DMARC in place, at minimum, your emails will be sent to spam or rejected outright. For more information about authentication and how to set it up, please refer to this article.

Match your sender name and email

Be sure to use an actual, existing valid email address to collect replies to your newsletters and make sure it matches your ‘from’ name. Some email providers, like Gmail, actually look into recipient behavior after an email lands in the inbox. If a subscriber responds to your email, it’s more likely to be marked as important. To assist with subscriber trust, the best practice is to match your ‘from’ name to be the same or similar to your ‘from’ email address. For example, if a contact receives an email from ABC Widgets Support, they would expect it to be linked with an email address similar to [email protected].

How to edit your sender details

It’s common for company mail administrators and individual email users to use the from address to identify trusted senders. You should choose sender details that clearly identify you or your organization. Often that will be your company name, or the name of the product people have signed up to learn about. Sender details can be changed in two ways, as explained in the sections below.

Change the default sender details for all emails

If you regularly use the same name and email address for your mailings, you should set these up as the default sender details in your account. Every time you create a new mailing or automation, these will autofill for you.

1. Access your account settings.
   1. Tiered accounts: Navigate to the appropriate subaccount and click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of your screen.
      1. If you are a Manager or Parent user, scroll down to Subaccount settings and choose Account from the dropdown menu.
      2. If you are an Administrator user, choose Account from the dropdown menu.
   2. Standalone accounts: Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of your screen and choose Account from the dropdown menu.
2. Click on the Sender info tab.
3. Enter your preferred sender name and email address.
4. If the address field is empty, you will be required to fill that out, as well, before you can save.
5. Click on the Save button.

Change sender details for a single email

When sending a mailing, you can change your sender details on the mailing details page. It can be a one-off change for a specific email, or you can tick the checkbox below each field to set these details as the new default.

How to add a separate reply-to email

The reply-to address refers to the email address that will be used if recipients respond to your mailing. Unless you add a specific email address for this purpose, all replies will be sent to the sender address. There are two important aspects to remember here. First, you’ll want to ensure that your reply-to email address is based on the same domain as your sender email address, and second, make certain that the address is from a unique domain and not a free webmail address like @gmail.com.

As an example of what NOT to do, let’s say the sender email is @yourcompany.com but the reply-to email is @gmail.com, this can look like a phishing attempt to most mail clients, and any campaigns you send will likely get filtered as spam or even be rejected altogether, which can negatively affect your sender reputation.

To add a different reply-to address, after you have clicked to Review or Review & send on the mailing details page, check the Set a separate reply-to email address checkbox that’s under your sender name and email, then enter your preferred address.

Personalize for the purpose

If you send different types of emails, give subscribers an idea of what you’re sending them by fitting the sender email address to the purpose, like these precursors alumni@, provost@, or newsletters@. Or, if you’re worried about managing too many email addresses, you can always use a different reply-to address when sending a campaign to redirect replies to fewer mailboxes.

This splitting of function also allows subscribers to manage your emails using their own inbox client filters however they see fit. It also ensures that if they, for example, write a rule that deletes all emails from newsletters@, they will still receive emails from alumni@ or provost@.

Don’t use a no-reply address

Sending from a no-reply address comes across as uncaring to subscribers. It can also be frustrating if they need to reach you about something, and it may even be bad news for delivery rates in the long term. The way a user engages with your email — including replying — can help determine where you end up in the inbox.

People replying to your emails is a positive engagement indicator that mailbox providers use to determine sender reputation, so it should be encouraged instead of discouraged. Of course, putting an email address out there may attract its fair share of auto-replies and bad responses, but it also opens the door to useful, legitimate conversations with your contacts. This is why a functional reply-to address is required because you must be able to view and respond to replies.

Using a no-reply email address violates CAN-SPAM and other global privacy laws because your subscribers must be able to opt out just by replying to the email.