In the digital presence, your business signboard is the name that you use as a branding. Your domain name basically represents who you are. When you communicate with your customer using CRM methodology your from name works as your logo or storefront. Usually, you never want to change your FROM NAME very frequently. This is just because you want to be recognizable quickly, your brand name and logo represent advertising, marketing, and even customer experience.
Those days are gone now and most companies would not hesitate to adopt event-based recognization which allows the marketer to represent themselves in a unique way by keeping their brand name aligned.
Most of the email client displays 20-25 characters of a FROM NAME, depending on the day of the week that the email was delivered and when the recipient reads the envelope content. So if your brand has less than 10 characters means you are missing an additional opportunity to represent yourself in a more effective way. You could take advantage of those remaining empty spaces in a meaningful way so that your communication with your customers will become more effective.
Here are some suggestion you would want to implement and when you start doing you’ll thank me 🙂
Suggestion 1: You may have noticed some of the emails in your inbox contain FROM NAME as a personal name. Though this is being done for a long time this is a great way to look at your communication more human than a robot. See the below examples
- Executive’s name @BrandName
- BrandName, Executive name or CEO or spokesperson name.
- First name from BrandName
Note – What name you use depends on business to business and type of communication you’re having. If your email contains just a list of some travel/holiday deals just like a weekly promotion you never want to use Executive name for this communication. Instead, try including this in your transactional kind of your emails. This way your email will not be lost with your promotional emails.
For example, Dell adds a human touch to their event invitation emails by using a sender name that combines the representative’s name and company’s name. This allows them to maintain trust and consistency as their subscribers get more familiar with their representatives.
Suggestion 2: Amplify your brand wherever it fits, consider adding your slogan after your brand name.
- BrandName – YourSlogan
- BrandName 1-Day Sale
- BrandName Friends & Family
- BrandName SaleName
- BrandName Weekly Ad
- BrandName | New Arrivals
- BrandName Flash Sale
- BrandName Clearance
- BrandName Alert
- BrandName News
- BrandName Breaking News
- BrandName Recommendations
- BrandName Webinar
- BrandName NewsletterName
- BrandName Invitation
- BrandName Blogs
- BrandName Guide
- BrandName Notebook
- BrandName Final SALE
That depends on various things depending upon your industry. For example, if you’re a weather service, airline, or hospitality company, you might use ‘YourBrand Hurricane Alert’ or ‘YourBrand Storm Alert’ as the FROM NAME of an email updating customers on the impact of the storm.
Suggestion 3: Promote your channel. This works when you are only good in-store or only good online, for example – you can utilize the extra FORM NAME space to further focus on the fact.
- BrandName.com
- BrandName Online
- BrandName Stores
Suggestion 4: Departmental communication – If you have an operational department or a product department adding a respective identifier helps your customers what email they are about to read. This will also organize your email priority wise, more importantly, this is very useful when your customer is a part of separate opt-in.
- BrandName Support
- BrandName Service
- BrandName Delivery
- BrandName Events
- BrandName Rewards
- BrandName LoyaltyProgramName
- BrandName Home/Beauty/Apparel/Photo/Pharmacy/etc.
Instead of just using their company name when messaging about their loyalty programs, you’ll see brands use the names of their loyalty programs — Starbucks Rewards—which almost always include the company’s brand name, too.
Tags like “Customer Service,” “Customer Care,” and “Guest Rewards” can be overly long for brands that don’t have really short names. Look for one-word equivalents whenever possible to avoid or minimize truncations of your email FROM NAME.
Suggestion 5: Automated Emails. Triggered emails are highly relevant and high value, so consider helping them stand out in the inbox by hinting at their special, contextual nature.
Receipt email: BrandName Receipt/Receipts/Order/Reservations
Shipping notification email: BrandName Notification, YourBrand Shipping Notif.
Product review request email: YourBrand Reviews
Customer service feedback request email: BrandName Guest Survey
Registration confirmation email: BrandName Registration, YourBrand Events Registration
Shopping cart abandonment email: BrandName – Cart Reminder, YourBrand – Your Cart
Browse abandonment email: YourBrand Product Assistance, YourBrand Product Help
That is especially true for retailers that have a heavy promotional mailing schedule. Triggered emails can get lost in the mix unless they are differentiated in some material way and the from the line is a great way to do this.”
Suggestion 6: Seasonal Occasions. Retailers and other brands that are heavily driven by seasonality may want to consider extending theirs FROM NAME with a seasonal tag, although this is currently a rarely used approach.
- BrandName | Back to School
- BrandName Black Friday
- BrandName – Cyber Monday
- BrandName Holiday
- BrandName Diwali SALE
Suggestion 7: When you have a business in more than one brand – Use this opportunity to educate your customers that you both are the same so that low brand value name will gain some reputation due to your higher brand value name.
BrandName | PartnerBrandName – Amzaon | Souq
I would caution you against abbreviating or using an acronym as your sender’s name if you don’t commonly use it in other channels already. The No. 1 goal of your email from the name is to make it immediately clear who you are and you don’t want to compromise that brand recognition for anything.
Test it! Even if you have a nice, short brand name, you’ll want to test whether various from name extensions are winners with your subscribers. Be sure to set up your A/B testing correctly.
Suggestion 8: Set up BIMI. Adding additional words to your sender name has the potential to dilute your brand name. Ensure that your branding is as strong as possible by making use of Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI), which enables your logo to appear next to your email FROM NAME in many inboxes. BIMI boosts your branding and recognition, which in turn can increase engagement and therefore deliverability.
Don’t overdo it. Just as with any other tactic, there can be diminishing returns if your audience sees it too much.
Some clients have seen the most success by being very selective in choosing which promotions, lifecycle triggers, and other messages to use this tactic. That’s the best way to ensure that the impact from changing up your FROM NAME doesn’t get diluted.
