Gregg Blanchard August 26, 2021
Whenever you send an email, your ESP asks you what you'd like to use as the "From name" when they send that campaign. Most of us simply don't touch that box.
Why?
There could be any number of reasons.
- It doesn't cross even cross our mind
- We haven't changed, so why would our name change
- We've built trust in our name, consistency builds on that
- Someone tested it and proved what we currently use performs best
Personally, I'm somewhere between the "we haven't changed" and "doesn't even cross my mind" camps. I haven't changed it for so long that I forget it's even an option sometimes.
But not lately.
Last year we built a dashboard that compared Donald Trump's email strategy to Joe Biden's. Political candidates, it turns out, use a very, very unique style of email. You my be familiar with how their appearance differs from traditional email designs - a logo, white backgrounds, big blocks of text up top, donation request links below...
But that's just the beginning of how their strategies are fairly unique in the world of marketing. And that is no truer than with their use of the "From name."
One of the features of SendView Dashboards is the ability to compare to senders' tactics side-by-side. And of the of the things we reveal on this report is their use of from name and from address. So to illustrate this difference I'll compare Joe Biden's to one of my favorite ski resort's email marketing. Keep in mind this is for just the last 30 days.
Count 'em up. In the last 30 days one of my favorite ski resort's email campaigns have used just 1 "From name" in their emails. Joe Biden's team, on the other hand, has used 24 different names. Donald Trump? He used 81.
I initially wasn't going to include this, but figured I might as well. Here's Donald Trump's compared to one of our favorite shoe brands. Get ready to scroll...
So what is going on here? I have a few theories, but primarily I think it's a way to keep their email volume up without making the recipient feel like they're getting bombarded from the same person all day long. Perhaps there's also a level of hoping folks feel that many of the people they trust are all emailing them.
Either way, it's a fascinating strategy. Not one I plan to emulate, mind you, but an interesting one to noodle on.