Yes.

Here’s why:

Yesterday, I received an email from Ben Downing* with the subject line, “How to Turn a Good Idea into a Great Presentation.” The subject line immediately caught my attention. As a guy with a ton of (good?) ideas who also does a lot of presentations, I was interested. Then, I glanced at the from name: Ben Downing. My first thought, “Who the heck is Ben Downing?” I tapped into my memory bank – for 7 seconds – and came up with nothing. I was pretty sure I had never heard of this Ben Downing.

So, what did I do next? I deleted the email. Total time spent thinking about this email was approximately 15 seconds. That’s about 14 seconds more than I normally spend per email.

Being an email marketing guy, I decided to go to my trash folder a few minutes later and look at that email again (Note: I’m pretty sure this is not what “normal” consumers do). I opened the email. Low and behold, the email was actually from eMarketer. See below for a screengrab of the top of the eMarketer email:

Now let me be clear: eMarketer is a company that I trust. I love their reports. I find value in (nearly) every email they send. I use their content in presentation. I share their emails, their reports, their charts, etc. The only problem? Based on the sender (From Name) Ben Downing, I never would have opened this email. I don’t know Ben.

So, does the from name (sender) of an email matter? You bet.

My challenge to eMarketer: The next time you send an email, do an A|B split. Try a person’s name (maybe Ben, maybe someone else) and pit it against eMarketer. I’d be willing to bet you get a higher open rate on eMarketer vs. a person’s name. Deal?

One more note: When I first saw this email from Ben, I tweeted about it. As I was penning this blog post, two folks from eMarketer replied – BTD1976 and Stephanie Reese. As you’ll see from their responses, both appreciated the feedback and promised to test next time around. Sweet.

Along with eMarketer, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the importance of From Name. Have you tested the From Name in the past? What results did you uncover?

*This is nothing personal again Ben Downing. I’m sure he’s a nice fellow.

DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory

At Blue Sky Factory, we strongly believe that, if used properly, email marketing and social media go together like Batman & Robin. If effectively implemented, email marketing can power social media and social media can power email marketing.

Good news! We have an eBook that provides 16 tips to use email and social together.

What are you waiting for? Download the eBook now!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 25th, 2011 at 5:00 am and is filed under From Name. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.