Why DoNotReply Email Addresses Can Be Bad For Business

Posted by Karl Foxley on Aug 21, 2009 in Blog, Coaching, Email Marketing, Online Coaching | 0 comments

Do you send out emails with the following?

donotreply @ yourcompany.com

If you do, then you may be missing out on the opportunity to have your customers ask you a direct question that could lead to additional sales. At the very least, you will be reducing the opprotunity for conversation and this is counter-productive to building customer relationships.

I am personally on the list of 100s of marketers and companies and I am surprised at the number of donotreply emails I do get in a day.

Let me explain exactly why I do not like this from a customers point of view.

A company sends an email to me (from a do-not-reply email address) about their latest product that I may be interested in.

I am interested but I have a question, but instead of hitting ‘reply’ and sending the question in the easiest and quickest way available to me (the customer), I have to visit their website and find the ‘contact us‘ link and submit the question in this way.

I may be interested in the product but if I am in the middle of things, we have to work right, so I put this on my ‘do later list’. As the day goes on this ‘email’ will get buried under newer emails as they arrive meaning I will probably forget about it as other companies catch my attention.

The company, by using a do-not-reply email address, has essentially shut off communication with the very people they are contacting and are possibly losing sales (as is often the case when it comes to me).

Flipping this on it’s head, lets say the company sent the same email but used a contact @ yourcompany.com or even yourname @ yourcompany.com email address then it makes them appear more open to communication.

You can take this one step further and add this simple bit of text towards the bottom of your emails:

If you have any questions then simply hit the reply button and well get back to you as soon as possible.

I’m sure you can come up with something even more inspiring than the example I gave, but as you can see, this simple bit of text will open up the ability to answer questions in the most convient way to your customer.

A customer may be one step away from purchasing your product but has ‘one quick question’ about a returns policy and by NOT using a ‘do-not-reply’ email address you are allowing your customer to ask a question quickly, for you to respond quickly and to make a sale you may have, otherwise, lost.

If you use a dedicated email service provider such as AWeber you will have to include a reply @ address so that your customers can contact you easily, the way you should want it to be! Ty to use something like, contact or yourname instead of donotreply for greater customer interaction.

If you are still deciding whether email marketing is for you and your business then why not take AWeber for a Test Drive, you won’t fail to be impressed with their service.

Try AWeber Email Marketing Risk-Free

To your success,

Karl Foxley

photo credit: idogcow