It's been a while since there was a good debate about whether emails should be sent with the brand or a person highlighted in the sender line. For a while, our founder Chris Baggott was a huge proponent of sending from individuals--logic being that people connect with people, not faceless entities.

Where the subscriber actually KNOWS someone inside your company, this may be true. However, a recent experience with Yankee Group made me very skeptical about adopting this approach across the board.

I registered for a webinar Yankee Group was doing this week and I never got the information on how to actually attend the webinar. Let me restate that... I don't know if I received it. I haven't received anything from "Yankee Group" or anything similarly logical. I can only assume that if an email was sent, that it came from an individual that I have still to identify in my inbox. Why do I suspect that? Because this week I started receiving the "Yankee Group Anywhere Newsletter" from someone named Emily Green. Worse still, the reply email address is not branded.  The domain on the email address is from the email service provider used by Yankee Group: Emily_Green@[ESP Domain].

Seems to me this is an example of a good idea gone bad. Sending commercial messages from an individual is a decent idea if you are confident the receiver will recognize the sending name. I get marketing messages from companies I work with that are "from" my sales rep. For example, one research company I work with sends email this way. I get their email--which is obviously produced and distributed by the marketing organization--from "Steve". I know Steve and I know who he works for. This tactic works since I always check emails from Steve. However, I don't know Emily Green. I do know the Yankee Group.

Moral of the story, make sure you send email from an entity--be it person or company--that your subscribers will recognize.