Sender name and adress
Before a contact even reads your subject line, they've already looked at who the email is from. Research shows that around 65% of recipients look at the sender address before deciding whether to open, making your sender information as important as the subject line itself. Getting it right is one of the simplest things you can do to protect your open rates and your sender reputation.
Prerequisites
- You need at least one validated sender address in Flexmail. Add sender addresses under Settings > Add or remove senders before creating a campaign.
- Your sender domain should be a domain you own. Sending from a free domain (gmail.com, outlook.com) affects deliverability and looks unprofessional.
The display name
The display name is what contacts see in their inbox before opening the email. Use a name they'll immediately recognise, typically your company name or brand name, exactly as it appears elsewhere in your communications.
Avoid building recognition around a specific employee's name unless that person has a long-established relationship with your audience. Staff move on. A sender name built around your brand is stable indefinitely.
Keep the display name short, many email clients truncate it in the inbox view. Put the most recognisable part first, and aim to stay under about 20 characters.
The sender email address
Your sender address needs to be validated in Flexmail before you can use it. Add it under Settings > Add or remove senders. Choose an address on your own domain, contacts are more likely to trust and open email from a domain they recognise.
Support tip You can use a dynamic sender address: Flexmail checks a custom field on each contact and sends from the corresponding validated email address. Useful if different team members should appear as the sender for their own contacts.
The reply-to address
If you want replies to go to a different address than the one you're sending from, set a reply-to address in the campaign settings. This is useful if your sending address is a marketing alias but you want replies to reach a team inbox or a specific person.
Pro tips
- Consistency matters as much as the specific name or address you choose. Once contacts learn to recognise your sender name, changing it, even to something better, causes a temporary drop in open rates as people re-learn who you are. Make deliberate choices and stick with them.
- If you manage multiple brands from one Flexmail account, set up separate validated sender addresses for each brand. This keeps each brand's reputation and recognition separate.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Sending from a free email domain like gmail.com or hotmail.com. This affects deliverability and looks unprofessional. Always use your own domain.
- Using an employee's name as the sender name for all campaigns. If that person leaves, contacts will stop recognising the sender and open rates will drop until you rebuild recognition.
- Changing your sender name or address without communicating it to your audience. If you must change, consider sending a brief heads-up email explaining the change before you switch.
- Using a no-reply address. Contacts who want to respond or ask a question and can't are more likely to unsubscribe or mark the email as spam. Use a monitored address.
GDPR considerations
GDPR Your sender address should be accurate and identifiable. Misleading or falsified sender information is a violation of anti-spam legislation in Belgium and across the EU. Make sure the address you send from corresponds to a real, monitored mailbox at your organisation, and that the display name accurately represents who is sending the email.
Next steps
- Validate all sender addresses you plan to use under Settings > Add or remove senders before creating your next campaign.
- Review your current sender names across active campaigns and check for inconsistencies or outdated names.
- See "What makes a good subject line?" to optimise the other element contacts see before opening.