What are role addresses?

Role addresses are the administrative email accounts that all companies use to collect incoming emails that should be handled by a group or department. Typical examples are help@, mailer-daemon@, admin@, etc.

Why should you not send to role addresses?

There are two main reasons not to send marketing content to role addresses.

It’s bad practice – These email accounts were built for efficiency and functionality, not one-to-one communications. Most of the time they are system or administrative inboxes and used solely for such purpose. It is very unlikely that anyone would intentionally use such an address to subscribe to a Newsletter, and your response rate will reflect that.

It’s a risk – Since your content is not what the recipient will expect to see in that inbox, you run a high risk of the email being instantly deleted or marked as spam. And since you are not sending to a known individual, it is impossible to prove that the person opening the email has given their consent for you to send it, raising the likelihood of a complaint.

Furthermore, these addresses are often publicly available on websites, meaning they are easily picked up by spammers. Email providers know this and monitor emails sent to role accounts, often using them as spam traps.

Further reading

More information on how the Emarsys platform treats role email addresses and which role email addresses are automatically excluded from sending can be found in this help page article.

For more information on the definition of role accounts and their purpose, you might want to read the Internet Engineering Task Force memorandum on this subject.

What’s next?

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You can ask questions and provide suggestions for helpful email deliverability topics in the Q&A area Q&A – SAP Emarsys Email Deliverability.

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