I recently spoke at the Inbox/Outbox conference held in London 17/18 June. I sat in on Nate Elliott of JupiterResearch’s keynote talk (very informative) about email trends in the context of online communications … and something he said just jumped out at me.

The practice of using Do-not-reply email addresses in the from field.

He says do-not-reply email addresses should be considered an obsolete 20th practice.

I couldn’t agree more.

We no longer live in a do-not-reply world. Companies need to realise that we, ALL of us, want and now expect to be able to reply – to engage with, to interact. Immediately. From facebook, articles posted within online publications, blog posts to websites that feature user-reviews of products and services … we now live in a “we want to reply” kind of world. In fact, it’s heading quickly towards the “we have a right to reply”!

I contend that it reflects badly on any company that uses do-not-reply emails in any context, no matter how large the organisation. And it doesn’t matter if we don’t even need or want to communicate you the company – it creates a perception of barriers.

With companies keen to jump on the social networking bandwagon, it’s ironic that there are probably a good number of them that actually use the do-not-reply in their email marketing campaigns. Yet they don’t see the irony in this. Companies want to control WHEN customers can interact with them – and it just doesn’t work that way anymore. A company must strive to strip back as many barriers and layers as possible to allow people to actually get in contact with a real person at the company.

Every email sent from a company, even a transactional email, should allow for two-way communication. There should be processes in place to handle emails coming back into the company. If it is an impossibility to have someone to handle the incoming emails, then I would consider it acceptable to have an initial automatic reply that gives the recipient contact points in relation to the specific question they have. Sort of like that automated phone system that says “press 1 for this, press 2 for that…”

Again, in today’s world, since anything can be found cheaper and faster online, it can come down to customer care, and the ability to get customer satisfaction immediately that will retain your customers. If you don’t do this, you risk people writing about their bad experiences trying to communicate with your company on the many, many social network sites available around the internet.

Posted on July 2nd, 2008 under Email Marketing, ezine strategy .
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