In this blog article, we are going to take a look at your send-from address, or more specifically using free email accounts such as Gmail or Hotmail. 

As we’ve addressed in previous articles, the send-from address that you use for your email marketing does have quite a significant effect on your inbox placement, interactions and conversions.

If you are using a free email account, such as Gmail, Yahoo or Apple for your email correspondence then, can you – or should you use it for your email marketing?

Trust

Email marketing is all about trust, you’ll need to build trust with your recipients before they feel safe enough to start interacting with your email marketing campaigns.

If you are sending from your company domain name – then this is much easier to do than if you are using a free Gmail (or similar) account. Your company domain name is a clear and obvious statement that you are who you say you are. As free email accounts are often used by people sending unsolicited or scam emails – then these addresses can carry a lot of negative connotations.

Inbox visibility

In order for your email marketing to convert, then it needs to be visible. In the crowded inboxes of today, this can be difficult to achieve. All of us will already receive lots of email traffic from people and businesses that we know using free email accounts. 

This means that if you are also using one of these for your email marketing, then your email may get lost amongst similar traffic using the same domain.

Approval from the address owner

When you create a free email account with any one of the major service suppliers, you’ll need to tick a box to say that you have read and will abide by their terms and conditions. 

Pretty much all of them have a line or a paragraph in there, letting you know that they prohibit the use of their email address domain to be used for the purposes of email broadcasts. 

They all monitor the send volume originating from their email address account holders – if they detect a volume of email sends that look like they may be part of an email camaign, then they do reserve the right to suspend and/or delete your account.

No access to domain verification

If you are using third party email marketing software to send out your email marketing campaigns, then you will most probably have had to add domain verification to your company domain name.

Verifying your domain name really helps with great inbox placement. It adds a seal of authenticity to your send, most inbox filters nowadays will insist on this being in place in order to deliver an email through to the inbox.

In order to add verification, you’ll need access to the control panel of your domain name. It involves adding an SPF record and a DKIM signature.

If you are using a free account such as Gmail or Hotmail etc, then you won’t have access to the domain settings to be able to add this. Lots of these service providers also go a stage further – then have a rule added that actively prevents emails from being sent via third-party email marketing software.

Not being able to access the domain verification settings pretty much kills the ability to use third-party email marketing software stone dead. 

Summary 

Free email accounts are great to use for general correspondence, but for email marketing, there are quite a few solid reasons why they just aren‘t suitable.

Commercial domain names are very cheap nowadays and very easy to set up. It’s well worth spending the very small amount of money to secure our company domain name.