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Do-not-reply

blog.untrod.com

43 pointsnumlocked33 comments

False.

1) Larger companies have servers dedicated to sending out mass emails and the email address has to resolve back to the sending server properly or the spam filters kill it.

2) They need you to click the links in the email for analytics. Learning what offers get the most traction HELPS them AND YOU so they deliver relevant content in the future.

3) If you use a "support" or "sales" email as the sender and then send the mass email to 100,000 people, you are going to get 20,000 bounce-backs, littering your support email channel and support software with garbage.

4) You can't have people replying with "don't email me again" because those will get missed. Again, you can't have a large list and realistically go through all the bounce-backs looking for legitimate unsubscribe messages - the links IN the email need to be used for this.

It's not fair to compare email campaigns to calling a company on the phone. Apples and Oranges.

But these bouncebacks are predictable, no? There are several key words in them that identify them as bouncebacks, no? So make a spam filter for them, and it'll work great, especially because the mail programs aren't trying to evade spam filters with their messages.

Have you ever dealt with over 1000 bounce-back messages? It's as if every email server on the planet uses a different bounce-back method and message. It's terribly unpredictable. And false positives are the problem I'm talking about.

If you allow bounce-backs or replies with personalized messages, as a larger company, you have to let them through or you will miss something. I don't know support departments big enough to wade through this amount of junk every time you have to notify your user base of something.

What technology can deal with spam, where the originator is actively and maliciously trying to break your filtering algorithm, but is helpless when dealing with bounce-backs, where there is no such intent?

It's possible, sure. But I'm not aware of any off-the-shelf options (as with spam filtering) and it's certainly much easier to just say do-not-reply

But I'm not aware of any off-the-shelf options

Then you haven't looked very hard. Every CRM system worth its salt (including the free OTRS) supports this. Either by inserting a cookie into the initial mail ("please leave this line intact when you reply") or, smarter, by assigning a dedicated reply-to address to each recipient.

It's not rocket science and adding a "do not reply to this mail" speaks volumes about how little you care about customer service.

Right, obviously there are plenty of systems that will tag all incoming mail and create a ticket for it, etc.

But I don't want 12,000 tickets for Out of Office messages in my CRM system, thanks.

Have you ever dealt with over 1000 bounce-back messages? It's as if every email server on the planet uses a different bounce-back method and message. It's terribly unpredictable.

Lots of people have done mailshots before. Is there no open-source email-bounce-rejection corpus yet?

And you didn't even mention the Out Of Office automailers in different languages. Or, god forbid, you actually want to send an email with the word "vacation" in the subject -- how can you filter the replies?

99,999% of MTA bounces can be automatically classified, there's not so many different MTA implementations in the wild. The same applies to 99,9% of vacation responders because most people use the standard templates from their Outlook or Webmailer.

The rest is intern-food. A single person can easily classify 20+ mails per minute. And that's what happens in companies with real customer service.

Uh, have you ever actually tried? Because I have, and neither of those numbers are anywhere close to what I experienced. It's probably true that a plurality of the messages are standard Outlook autoresponders, but not "most" -- and definitely not 99.9%. And a very large number of MTAs are either misconfigured or intentional subvert the standard in order to confuse spammers.

These days there are thousands of "So and So doesn't work here any more" messages that have to be removed from the list by hand, then the people using Lotus Notes, Eudora, and god knows what else. Also non-standard Outlook messages and Outlook messages in different languages. Worst is those whitelist anti-spam challenges that require you to fill out a CAPTCHA (or pay the spam filtering company a bribe!) for each message you want to send to a subscriber.

We do comb through the replies because email is an important aspect of our business, but it's a lot more work than you make it out to be. If you're just a small company sending out a monthly newsletter, I'd probably say don't bother.

Users will reply to your "no-reply" e-mail, especially if it's a registration e-mail.

One way or another, it's worth trying to get these e-mails into your support channel.

Your bounce-back to the reply can simply be to redirect the user to the proper channels of support based on their specific request.

If a customer needs support, you don't want them pulling up that last "offer" email they received and trying to get help with a technical problem. From a company perspective, you would lose control.

Just bounce back 2 links:

1) Click here for sales. 2) Click here for support.

I am not attacking you but your argument. What decade are we living in? The 1960s? Why must I sort my question into the correct category before choosing an emal address for the company?

Email filtering and classification software can and should handle this with aplomb. Is there any argument whatsoever that existing technology can't classify questions by email in such a constrained problem space?

The point here is that the company can and should handle responses and figure out how to route them in a cost-effective manner, not throw up roadblocks in the form of links to click or multiple email addresses to use to post a question.

Well...the same reason that you have to press 1 for sales and 2 for support when you call the main number?

Picking the correct department right at the start is the easier way to get you in touch with someone who can actually answer your question.

His whole point is that if you feel the need to blast me with your semi-important offer, you should feel the need to listen to my response.

Most of your points just highlight that having a do-no-reply is a simple convenience to the sender at the expense of the receiver. That is exactly the attitude that he is talking about.

His whole point is that it isn't convenient for HIM. Consumers seem to think they should get EVERYTHING they want, but in this situation, the harm done is miniscule, and it isn't meant to create pain for the consumer, it's meant to run the business as efficiently and intelligently as possible.

He doesn't mention anything about offers I don't believe, and I'm not strictly talking about offers either, I'm referring to any email that HAS to get through to the consumer, whether it's an offer or an update.

Since, in effect, he's the one paying to receive the message and, potentially, paying for reading it with his time, I agree with him that his convenience is more important than that of the sender.

I agree. Besides, a better comparison to email campaigns, instead of phone calls, is mass mailings via snail mail. I don't think people expect that the return address on the envelope is the same address to which all customer service related letters should be sent.

> It's not fair to compare email campaigns to calling a company on the phone. Apples and Oranges.

Sure it is - they're both customer contact via an interactive channel. The fact that it's cheaper for them to send e-mail than to call does not imply that they should spend less money dealing with e-mail.

My time matters and a company that respects it gets my biz from one that doesn't.

And, it's not like they can't spend the money that they save on using e-mail instead of phone (or USPS mail) to buy e-mail processing software. Sure, there will be some messages that it won't handle, but it can handle the vast majority, leaving them plenty of time to handle exceptions.

We have a catch-all running on the domainthat routes all e-mail sent to unknown addresses to customer service.

We get e-mail sent to "no-reply" registration all the time. If we didn't do it, It's worth it not to have so many customers feel ignored the first time they try to contact us.

Careful with that. There are spam bots out there that just pick a domain and starting firing away many thousands of messages at <common_user_name>@yourdomain.com

QFT: Using a do-not-reply address to communicate ... sends a message that the organization's time is more valuable than yours.

Though there are legitimate exceptions - I'm thinking, for example, of an opt-in automated status update that has the sole purpose of sending you a piece of information to which you would have no particular need to reply.

Exactly this. There's plenty of legitimate one-way uses of email communication.

When I'm getting confirmation emails from Amazon after having bought something, for example, I do not expect to be able to reply to the machine sending them out -- it doesn't make much sense.

I'll go further with my argument: the ability to reply via email doesn't guarantee my communication will be dealt with in an appropriate or timely manner. Far better, I think, to go to the support section of a site and use a guided process to get my query to either answer the question myself or to have it directed down the appropriate channel.

> the ability to reply via email doesn't guarantee my communication will be dealt with in an appropriate or timely manner.

If they're too incompetent to handle email, I won't expect timely or appropriate action from them no matter what I do, and I'll regard doing business with them accordingly.

Having a single email address at the top of an email, necessitating parsing or eyeballing the content to understand the intentions and then forwarding it on to the appropriate people is surely more work, and less efficient, than the alternatives.

It's conceptually easier to streamline support via a guided on-line process or knowledgebase type repository. Users can often answer their own questions, or if not they can at least be pointed at the appropriate department. I'd go as far as to say a large retailer would appear more incompetent if my only access to support was via a single email address.

I completely agree if the email was the only point of access, but forcing customers onto a site is a classic case of forcing customers into a work flow that makes sense for the organization instead of providing tools to work with the customer's natural work flow.

> <em>I understand that a large email blast will generate all kinds of auto-responses, email bounce messages, and other forms of invalid replies, but with some decent filtering and a little work an organization could surely separate the wheat from the chaff. It's the least they could do to in exchange for reading their message.</em>

I don't think the author appreciates how difficult this is. It's just not realistic in all situations, especially situations where the user knowingly signs up to receive an automated message.

I normally use Error-To for do-not-reply, and post a valid reply-to header, but in many scenarios this isn't enough. dpcan's first comment is particularly relevant > "the email address has to resolve back to the sending server properly or the spam filters kill it"

I don't think the author appreciates how difficult this is.

I think it's trivially easy. Hire some temp workers to do it.

Heck, you could put a note "We send these emails to a lot of people and many are returned to sender unopened. If you reply to this, please type the word 'reply' in the following space to make it stand out from the returned emails and grab our attention : [ ] "

Then filter those out as a priority. That could solve a lot of the problem even without a good mail filter.

Temp workers are more expensive than CPU time. Bayesian filtering would go a long way in cutting out the auto responders, but I agree, the problem doesn't seem too difficult.

If it wasn't too difficult, big companies with loads of money would be doing it, right? Doesn't seem that many are, which suggests that the biggest and best haven't found an efficient solution they think is worth paying for.

To me, it suggests that they don't think the recipient's time is worth paying for, which isn't the same.

That's pretty much what my company does, but surely you'll agree that this requires more resources than sending from a do-not-reply.

If we were just sending out a monthly newsletter, it probably wouldn't be worth it.

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