Why E-Mail Should Come from the Business Name

Dear Brittany, dear Alan, dear whatever generic name you're using...

Possibly you think that having e-mail show up as originating from someone with a given name only will cause that e-mail to be mistaken for personal messages from family members. Not in my family it won't. We all know better than to use the Internet for personal messages. E-mail is public and should originate from an office, even if it's located in somebody's garage.

As a result, where a mass-mailed "newsletter" from a web site with a reasonable organizational name like "Institute for Responsible Technology" or "Townhall" or "Daily Kos" or even "Cracked," and a headline like "Trump attacks Fox News," would at least go into the Bacon Folder...a mass-mailed "newsletter" from what appears to be somebody's given name looks like SPAM.

I have tried to check these things, and delete those spammy-looking e-mails without reporting them as spam when they come from a legitimate but misguided nonprofit organization. However, spammers aaalllways use what appear to be individuals' given names, so you shouldn't count either on (1) people taking the time to "hover" over your e-mail address so your organization's name will pop up, or (2) that feature of Yahoo e-mail working every time (it's never been reliable).

Just use your organization's name, already. Or, if a lot of people have already blocked your organization and you're trying to sneak your messages around their spam filters...take a hint, and use your complete screen names at least. Trust me: Everyone in the United States knows half a dozen people called "Brittany" and probably two or three dozen people called "Alan," and most of them are too young to be using the Internet and the others are old enough to know that a screen name should either sound like the full real-world name of some hypothetical person (but not anyone in your neighborhood) or else like the kind of product or message with which it's associated.

("But 'Daily Kos' doesn't sound like anything..." Well, it does; to those of us who've been online for ten or twenty years it sounds like the name of the leftist group blog to which the Daily Blaze was an answer. Each group took a joke and turned it into a brand. Most e-mail from The Daily Kos is bacon, but not spam. But if Daily Kos, or Daily Blaze, writers--and I do sometimes read both--were to start sending out e-mail from "Dave" or "Lyn," those e-mails would definitely look like spam.)