I have suggested several times that senders need to take responsibility for what they send. Part of taking that responsibility is being approachable.

When you send email to your boss, your reports, or your mother, what is your expectation? You expect that they will reply to you at some point. But, when you send a marketing message out into the world, what do you expect?

For many companies, the answer is that they full expect that people will not reply to them at any point. In fact, they go so far as to actually tell people that they don’t want to hear back from them. They do this by using “noreply” as part of the sender address, or maybe saying things like:

Please do not reply to this message; it was sent from an unmonitored email address.

The fact of the matter is that your recipients expect email to work like you do: As a two-way communications medium. When you use it only as a broadcast medium, you’re going to find yourself working at cross-purposes to your recipients.

And that’s rarely a good thing.