Email Branding – things to consider
Email Headers – are you branding your communications?
Part of branding is developing some level of customer trust – using solutions to increase this trust level should be one of your evaluation factors when selecting email service partners or solution partners where email is a component.
Most likely, you have received numerous emails from company X (or the message leads you to believe that company X sent them.) Have you ever looked at the hidden aspects of the message? How about for message that your send – If you use a third party to send out mass emails then there is a good chance that you are diluting your technology/domain brand.
Related item: Unless your communication is critical and you don’t have an alternative, don’t use a generic email account (i.e. non-company, free email account) to send company emails.
If you are a technology company and you out-source your email servers (quite common) then you should have your technical folks work with your email service provider to maximize your domain brand. I receive quite a number of emails where third parties are diluting their brands; if the email is from a technology company then I expect all ducks to be in a row (i.e. email headers should reflect the company sending the email, not the service being used.) When emails emphasize the service company then SPAM suspicions are raised for the message – it also leads me to believe that the company may not be adequately tech-savvy for my needs.
Some approaches:
- DNS tweaks (via your DNS and/or your service providers DNS)
- application software refinements (don’t use generic senders, i.e. the From: field should reflect your company)
- route third party managed messages through your email server (so when I get the message it is sent from your email server, not the service provider)
Examples of poorly branded/suspicous emails:
- Policy updates from Paypal in 2008 – did not come from a Paypal IP address
- various emails from various sources using the service ConstantContact.Com (not a problem as long as I am expecting such emails)
- most technology marketing emails (they all seem to want to track everything so the messages include web links that are activated when you view the message – very invasive IMO so I either will take steps to disable/delete such messages or I will use a friendlier email client that disrupts this tracking, i.e. if you use Microsoft Outlook then you are probably ‘tracked’ on a daily basis since as soon as you click on the message the software will ‘reach out’ and pull in any graphics or other ‘missing data’ related to the message; it will also ‘touch’ the automated tracking associated with the message so the sender knows: who read the message, when they read the message, where they are located, etc., …) Marketing folks love this, especially when you click on the links in the message and take the next steps in their purchasing funnel.
A related problem: Company X outsources product fulfillment to Company Y. The order process starts via the Company X web site. The process works smoothly, however, your partner, Company Y, creates a fake domain to send emails on your behalf. The emails do not reach the end user. The customer (me in this case) notices that there were some messages rejected from a phony domain – when I attempt to provide feedback to the either Company X or Y, there is no mechanism in place to facilitate this (both companies are setting themselves up for poor technical branding, i.e. they look like SPAMMERS.)
These types of email issues detract from your brand and could lead to failed emails as well as to the tagging of your domain as a SPAMMER. Just because you can does not mean that you should…
Sample Email headers
Good email branding header:
Received: from mta.COMPANY_Z-email.com (mta.COMPANY_Z.com [aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd])
by MyMail_Server.com (8.13.6.20060614/8.13.6) with ESMTP id m6OHoMNZ052278
for <My_Email@My_Domain.com>; Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:50:22 -0400 (EDT)
Poor email branding header:
Received: from smtp4.Some_Email_SERVICE.com (postfix@smtp4.Some_Email_SERVICE.com [aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd])
by MyMail_Server (8.13.6.20060614/8.13.6) with ESMTP id m33HXCUV051385
for <My_Email@My_Domain.com>; Thu, 3 Apr 2008 13:33:13 -0400 (EDT)
Failed/Poor email branding header:
Received: from Company_X.Company_Y.com (postfix@Company_X.Company_Y.com [aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd])
by MyMail_Server (8.13.6.20060614/8.13.6) with ESMTP id m33HXCUV051385
for <My_Email@My_Domain.com>; Thu, 3 Apr 2008 13:33:13 -0400 (EDT)
Note that if IP address in these headers (aaa.bbb.ccc.edd), if checked, should be valid (i.e. correctly configured in DNS records.) If it is not correct then your brand takes a negative and un-needed hit as well as having emails fail (i.e. if Company_X.Company_Y.com had a valid DNS record then the message would reach the user; in this case such messages are simply rejected by my email server.)
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