Do Not Reply

March 17, 2009

Have you ever sent email using a donotreply@example.com or noreply@example.com from email address? I have done this many times myself, but then the other day I realized that this practice makes no sense, at least for businesses.

When I got an email last week with such a bold DO-NOT-REPLY from address after placing an order, I had several thoughts... What happens if I do actually reply? What If I have a question, how can I contact you, why can't I just reply to this email? What if I just had a really good suggestion to share, oh well? Why don't they want my communication?

I think we use the noreply as developers a lot of times without thinking how it will be perceived to customers - "this company doesn't want to talk to me".

There are probably some cases where the noreply makes sense, but they are few and far between.

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On 03/18/2009 at 10:07:53 AM EDT Bradley Moore wrote:

One way communication is definitely for the lose.

It seems like we could make emails come from reports@.., invoice@.., alerts@.. and create aliases to the customer service group?

On 03/18/2009 at 10:21:12 AM EDT Pete Freitag wrote:

@Bradley - Yes That is certainly better to direct the emails somewhere where they can be processed. I think there will probably be some cases where you want the person to follow a web / http based process, you could probably use autoresponders to accomplish that.

On 03/18/2009 at 7:13:49 PM EDT hansen wrote:

Isn't the point with DNR, that the company doesn't need to think about backscatter?

When we send out newsletters and orders, we use DNS, since we don't care if people are on vacation, in a meeting or whatever they have set their annoying auto-responder to.

On 03/19/2009 at 3:04:12 AM EDT Zac Spitzer wrote:

I found the story.....quite a scary concept http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/03/they_told_you_not_to_reply.html

On 03/19/2009 at 9:30:12 AM EDT Pete Freitag wrote:

@Zac - I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that but I am a little.

@hansen - I think it would probably be pretty easy to filter out the vacation autoresponders.

On 03/19/2009 at 12:38:56 PM EDT Darren wrote:

I think this may be used to reduce spam, as these email addresses are usually used by automated sign-ups, etc.. No?

On 03/20/2009 at 8:18:34 AM EDT Micheil Smith wrote:

But.. but.. Why don't you want my reply? I might have a good idea :P

Actually, I don't really, but I do try to use an email address that makes sense. Would anyone want an invoice from a donotreply@mysite.com?

On 11/15/2010 at 6:14:32 PM EST afdksljedfdkjg wrote:

I got an email like that but did notice it said do not reply and reply. It did not get sent.

On 08/24/2011 at 2:27:12 PM EDT Jessica wrote:

OK but imagine you were the company that sent out the email... Of the 6,000 replies you receive some are out of offices (soft bounces), invalid emails (hard bounces), unsubscribes (even though there is another method to unsubscribe) or just straight up questions. Going through 6,000 emails to sort those 4 different kinds of replies is hell no matter what way you look at it. Best option - less the bounces go into the do-not-reply abyss, and provide a method to address the unsubscribes and questions.

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