It looks like there is a chance that having a sender or a reply-to email address that is invalid can harm our IP reputation and in time increase the likelihood of email from the related domain being flagged as spam.
We can not use an invalid email as the sender. This is by the design of our SMTP client and the requirements of our Hosting environments.
Because of this, we are required to use a valid mail account as a sender for all outbound email over SMTP from our servers
That being stated, the sender is a non-issue. This leaves us to question the reply-to part of our outbound email from our clients' websites.
Reference/Research and Notes
https://www.sendx.io/blog/emails-going-to-spam/
highlight from this article: "SPAM filters will know this is an invalid email once your receipts try to reply (because the reply emails will bounce). You will start seeing a hit to your IP reputation if this happens regularly."
My Notes: I do not think that this affects our sites, we are not using fake emails as the sender, and our IP addresses change regularly. On top of this, we have all of the appropriate settings in place for anti-spam in regard to the DNS and domain name configurations.
https://www.mailpoet.com/blog/never-use-no-reply-email-address/
highlights from this article:
- "no-reply addresses are more likely to get marked by spam by users themselves. For example, say a recipient tries to reply to your email. They get a notification that their email cannot be delivered. They think your email as spam, so they mark it as spam with their email provider."
- "By using a no-reply address, you are preventing customers from communicating with you. While there is no provision specifically outlawing no-reply email addresses, there are cases where it could impact your GDPR compliance. In addition, failure to adhere to GDPR could result in fines."
My Notes:
- Once again most of this article is speaking to the use of the no-repl@ in the sender, this is a non-issue for Firm Media. They do however point out many good points to the type of communication that this is setting up with our Clients' customers. I noted the 2 that stood out to me above. These 2 arguments to me are enough to consider the use of a valid email account as a reply to on the auto-responders.
https://www.codetwo.com/admins-blog/no-reply-mailbox-in-microsoft-365/
highlights from this article
This method actually goes over setting up a legit mailbox to use for no-reply@. This account will not store email at all so it does not need to be monitored, however, it is set up to auto-respond to anyone that sends mail to it with a message that says something along these lines:
- "This email address is not monitored. If you would like to contact us, wrote to example@example.com"
My Notes:
- This is a better way to approach the use of a no-reply@ in the reply-to header of an auto-responder. The reason this works is that it follows the actual guidelines of good email practice, (in regard to what is flagged as spam by mail clients and filters). I do however think that this is a lot of extra work and still leaves the issue of adding a less pleasant experience for the customers that are in communication with our clients. For this reason, I lean toward not doing this and rather using an actual mailbox that the clients approve in the reply-to header of the auto-responders we create.
https://www.mailgun.com/blog/no-reply-emails-brick-wall-email-communication/
highlights from this article
- "The original intention makes sense in that you want to help streamline communication channels for things like confirmation emails. However, oftentimes it ends up feeling like you’re talking to a brick wall"
- "There is something to be said about two-way communication, and email was built for that. When you set up an email campaign to use a no-reply address for the majority of your sending, you’re actively discouraging your customers from talking to you."
My Notes:
- Once again this is another article talking primarily about the use of a no-reply in the sender field. But they all contain the same question or argument seen in all of these articles, "This type of behavior shuts down 2-way communication and that may harm the experience for our clients and their potential customers"
Q: Can we just leave the reply--to setting on the auto-responder in Gravity forms empty?
The answer is, Yes, however, doing this leads the form to use the sender as the reply-to.
This would make the majority of our forms use secureforms@firmmedia.org as the sender and the reply-to. This adds a set anchor into the @firmmedia.org account that will allow people to reply if they choose. There is a flaw in this approach. the inbox for secureforms@firmmedia.org is not monitored. If a user replies to an auto-responder that is set to use this as the sender as the reply-to, their message will go through but never be reviewed or responded to. This in turn can lead to the user marking our sender as a spam account. This is not likely to happen often but the more forms we have using this as the reply-to increases the potential of it happening. If this piles up and the sender is marked as spam, the majority of Firm Media client contact forms will fail to work.
Putting everything we now know together.
Of course, it is ideal to have a valid reply-to email in all contact form auto-responders. This will only be possible if our clients provide us or approve a designated email account to act as the recipient of any responses from our automated auto-responders. If our clients do not approve or provide an account to be used as the reply-to, it is the best course of action to continue the use of a fake (no-reply@) mailbox. Yes, this is not great for user experience and may someday be in violation of the GDPR, but currently, it is okay to do and will only bother a small amount of the people filling out our contact forms.