If your email marketing provider (Constant Contact, Fishbowl, Emma, or – our Raleighwood Media Group exclusive email marketing provider – iContact.com) does not provide an opportunity to specify your “Reply-To” email address, you should be dumping them immediately for one who does.

I personally can attest that iContact.com does let you customize this very important part of your marketing emails. Never, never, never does a client email go out that does not have a “Reply-To” email address set up as part of their campaign.

Why is this so important, you may ask?

Habit – Because the “reply” function has become the ingrained way in all of us to respond to an email. I mean… it just kind of makes sense, right?

I, for one, am highly likely to hit “reply” in a heart beat, but I may not be paying the closest attention as to where that email message is going. Unfortunately, messages I send in response to commercial email often “bounce back” since the message got sent to an email address that didn’t actually exist. And if I’m doing it, I know others are, too.

Ease of Use – If you are encouraging your customers to contact you by email at any point in your marketing, chances are the “reply” function is going to be the easiest way for them to do so. As email users, we have become accustomed to the ability to hit reply and correspond in return to our original emailer. If your email marketing service does not allow you to set your own email address as the “Reply to” address, they are taking away your ability to communicate as we’ve all become accustomed to.

Keep It Simple, Simon! – As one of my favorite clients (Mandy, owner of Swagger Gifts) will tell you, you must make participation and communication between customer and business EASY and CLEAR AS DAY, or people will screw it up. GUARANTEED.

Communication is Key – It could tarnish your reputation, really! If the reply aimed at you happens to end up in the black hole of emails (ie: some automated email address that your email marketing company uses) instead of getting directly to you, you run the serious risk of looking to your audience as the type of business or individual that ignores, or doesn’t return, email inquiries. No self-respecting business or emailer wants to be “that guy”, right?

Questions? Feel free to ask!

I really, really hope my alma mater doesn’t employ these same practices. Shame on them too, if they do.

In 2008, I signed up to make a monthly automatic contribution to the NC Children’s Hospital (the “12 x 12 donation”). The NC Children’s Hospital is an absolutely amazing, and absolutely necessary place, that I would support with or without its affiliation to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. With that donation, they received my email address.

In 2009, I’ve signed up for the Morehead Planetarium email list. (Also cool, but not nearly as important as the Children’s Hospital.)

You can imagine my surprise (and little bit of disgust) when I received an email last week that opened with “Hello alumni and friends of Carolina,”

All jokes aside (and trust me, it could be way worse – not only did I graduate TWICE from another university, but I graduated TWICE from a RIVAL university), so why on Earth am I getting emails like this?

As I went to unsubscribe, I was taken to a subscription management page (ok – thumbs up are due here) where I found out I have been so kindly added to ALL of the following lists:

You’ll notice that neither the NC Children’s Hospital nor the Planetarium are on that list. But those are the only two institutions on the campus of UNC with my email address.

Clearly, I was about to be bombarded with emails that were not only irrelevant, but just downright unwanted. You want a quicker way to get people to just “Opt-out from all emails (Remove me from all current and future emails, regardless of any individual settings.)” and permanently ban you from contacting them ever again? I really can’t think of one.

Sigh.

Lessons Learned (the hard way by Carolina):

1 – Know your audience. If your list doesn’t come exclusively from a graduation or general university fund donor roster, don’t assume I’m an alum (or even a friend). You’re better off not using an introduction at all, unless you know for a fact that it will be all encompassing.

2 – Keep your contact lists relevant. Don’t share your email address lists across multiple (often ultimately unrelated) business units.