Seth Godin’s got a nice rant about emails that say, “do not reply to this email, because nobody will read it.”
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/07/if-you-dont-wan.html
These emails bug me too—except maybe some transactional messages. I don’t exactly expect to hit “reply” for an Amazon.com receipt.
Anyways, if you’re sending email marketing (not transactional) messages, you really, really should setup a dedicated reply-to email address before you send your first campaign. It’s a step that we’ve noticed a lot of newbie email marketers forget, and it’s exactly why we wrote this free guide:
Your First Email Marketing Campaign
It’s a checklist that covers lots of other little things new email marketers forget to do. Hope you find it useful.
I concur. I run a small theater company and every mailing (approx 1000 emails) we get at least 2 replies to the message. This is a great opportunity to give the personal touch and reassure them that there are actual people on the other end of the mailing which makes them far less likely to feel that the message is spam.
That’s a good point. I do enjoy surprising the heck out of people when I actually reply to them.
I loathe those messages as well. If my response isn’t important, then neither is the email containing that notice.