Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

It's more likely to get read if it's from a person.


It's best if the name on the email is someone the customers know (increases their trust and willingness to open the email).

Do the salespeople have their own specific accounts? If so, why not divide the emails up by person? Send email from Bob to his accounts, email from Jill to hers, etc.

Use the admin only if the clients deal with her, recognize her name, and trust her.

If not, then either use their salesperson, or make it from someone else in the company that would be a recognizable name.

Jodi

More often than not, a person's name will outperform a business name. It's not so much about deliverability (unless the business name happens to be "Las Vegas Casino Viagra Save $100 TODAY!"), but rather that people have only two things to consider whether to open an email (and when): the sender, and the subject line.

Your instincts about not using one of your administrative support people for this purpose are correct...if it's not a name that recipients will recognize, don't do it.

So, you have a couple options...

You could set up separate lists for each of your salespeople. I don't know how many email addresseses you have or how many salespeople you have, but it's an option.

Another option, not as elegant, but possibly workable if you can't split up the list, is to create a field called "salesrep" in your database, then attach the correct salesperson's name to each record. Then, you could merge {{{salesrep}}} into the subject line, like this:

From {{{salesrep}}}: Check this shiny thing out!

Which would then appear as:

From Paul Broni: Check this shiny thing out!

Not as elegant as having my name in the sender area, but a degree of personalization that might boost your response compared to none at all.

Another option, if you have the means, is to use a solution that will merge the {{{salesrep}}} data into the sender field. This is NOT common, certainly not on the lower-priced solutions, but ExactTarget, for example, has an enterprise class solution that will do this.

That's pretty slick stuff, but it's not cheap.

I hope this has been of at least a little help.

Paul

Kathy Ad-XYZ Company.

That's the way I encourage people to do it. If you are unable to let sales people do separate mailings, use the VP of sales or president;s name

Michael