The first thing people see when you send an email is “From:” and then your “Subject” (see “How to avoid email Subject Mistakes). You control “From” in your email client settings. For those of you using Outlook or Outlook Express, it is the “Name” field in your Mail Acount “Properties” box. For those of you using Eudora, it is called “Real Name.” You get the idea. The same types of conventions generally hold true for most web-based mail interfaces.
The “From” in your e-mail address can, and often does, make the difference between someone opening or deleting an email. That is if the intended recipient actually sees it.
As we have talked about before (What your email address says about you.), spam filters are everywhere including at the mail server level, the recipient’s ISP, often at the company level, possibly on the desktop as a standalone program, and finally, as a feature in the recipient’s e-mail program. Consequently, your “From” gets looked at several times before your email is (or isn’t) delivered. A “From” that includes a spammy-looking nick name, may make the difference as to whether your email is delivered and/or opened.
Your “From” should include your name (as the recipient knows it) and possibly your company name, your title or department. Couple a good “From” with a well-written “Subject” and your email will get delivered and opened before the others in those ever-expanding in-boxes of your recipients.
Paying attention to both the “From” and your email “Subject” will, indeed, pay you dividends for your time.
1 comment so far ↓
Understand the importance of the ‘from’ line but how about some guidance on the ‘to’ line. One of my frustrations with Outlook was the fact that as a recipient I had to completely open the message (another step) to see who received it and then that only gave me the alias of each person and not their actual address. Is there a way of configuring Outlook to make this work better?
Don’t have these problems when I use Eudora.
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