Your FROM Address is the email address recipients see when you send an email campaign.
Why is the FROM Address important?
Like your recipients, when you receive an email, what are the first things you look at? The subject line, the From Name, and the From Address. The From Name and From Address tells recipients who you are. If a recipient does not know who the message came from, they will likely not open it. Recipients also look at the From Address to verify if the email is legitimate or not.
Establishing trust with your recipients starts with your From Address.
Your From Address builds a relationship and rapport with your recipients. It should be relevant and recognizable amongst the many emails your recipient likely receives daily.
Another piece of email sending is sending reputation. Sending reputation is made up of several factors that affect your email deliverability, which determines if your emails go to the inbox or elsewhere. You guessed it! Your From Address is also part of your email sending reputation.
Use branding for your company
Branding is key to any successful email campaign. Matching your email address to the same domain as your website looks professional and on-brand. For example, if your company’s domain name is marketing.com, you should send campaigns through JangoMail with you@marketing.com.
If a customer visits marketing.com, and then later sees a message in their inbox from you@marketing.com, they will make the connection.
Use a recognizable From Address and From Name branded for your company.
Brand recognition helps increase the likelihood they will open your email.
Use a valid email address
Your From Address should be a real, valid email address that can receive replies.
This means your From Address has an MX record to receive incoming emails. JangoMail does not provide incoming email services so you need to provide your own inbox service. The MX record you create will point to whichever servers handle receiving email for your business.
Some receiving servers check for the existence of an MX record and the validity of your From Address. The lack of an MX record can potentially hurt your email deliverability.
Note: You should never use deceptive headers, From Addresses or From Names.
No public or free domains
Anyone can sign up for a free email account from Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, or other free email provider and say they are you.
Only you can prove your identity by owning your domain for your business.
Using an email address from a domain you own that is part of the branding for your business is a professional way to send email.
Using a public domain like Gmail.com as your From Address is also not a good idea for email deliverability. Most free, public email providers have a DMARC policy set up that prevents email delivery by telling receiving servers that check DMARC to reject or quarantine emails that are sent from their email domains outside of their service (like through JangoMail).
Avoid using a no-reply
A no-reply@ email address deters recipients from responding to your communications. It is impersonal and does not foster an email relationship. Recipients are less likely to add a no-reply @ address to their address book or safe senders list.
If the From Address or Reply-To Address is an unmonitored mailbox, be sure to make it clear to your recipients how to reply otherwise.
Separate with subdomains
Protect your top-level domain by sending with separate subdomains for each different type of email sending.
Email marketing and sending emails affect your domain’s sending reputation. Best practices for email marketing include sending from a subdomain rather than your top-level domain. For each different marketing or communication flow, a different subdomain should be used.
For example, you can use yourname@mail.marketing.com, instead of yourname@marketing.com.
Note that a subdomain is a separate domain to enter in DNS records. Chances are if you already have a website set up at your domain, there are probably a few DNS entries with your TLD (top-level domain) already.
Your subdomains should also redirect to your top-level domain’s website. Why does this matter? If recipients type your From Address domain into their browser, landing on your company’s branded website helps continue brand recognition and legitimacy.
Reply-to addresses
When a recipient replies to your mass emailing, where will the reply go?
If a Reply-To Address is specified, then the reply will go there. If a Reply-To Address is not specified, the reply will go to the From Address you specify when you send the message.
It is important to note that some email clients will ignore a Reply-To Address and instead send it to the From Address. This is a choice by the email client and cannot be changed by JangoMail. To ensure the reply goes where you need, use the desired Reply-To Address as your From Address.
We do not recommend using a free email account as your Reply-To Address. Some spam filters see this as a red flag and it can have a negative impact on your message’s spam score. The best practice for deliverability is to use the same address as your From Address.
To help you manage replies, you can set up forwarding addresses. For instance, you can have contact@yourdomain.com redirect to your personal address, like youremail@gmail.com, or an entire list of addresses.
Wrap-up
We cannot end a blog post without mentioning domain authentication via DNS records. Authenticating your From Address with the proper and necessary DNS records is very important to your success with email.
The JangoMail Support Team is ready to help you with any questions about your From Address and domain authentication. Contact us today!
