November 14, 2022 — Imagine a waitress that drops off your food then immediately puts on noise cancelling headphones, turns and walks away. That's the experience a noreply email address provides. Let's make email human again! If a human can't read and reply to emails it's not too hard to setup scripts that can at least do something for the customer.

My automated campaign against no reply email addresses. Anytime a company sends a message from a noreply address they get this as a response. I am aware of the irony.

Join the campaign against noreply email addresses!

My Gmail filter

Below is my Gmail filter. Paste it into noReplyFilter.xml then go to Settings > Filters > Import filters. Join the campaign to make email more human human again!

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:apps='http://schemas.google.com/apps/2006'>
    <title>Mail Filters</title>
    <id>tag:mail.google.com,2008:filters:z0000001687903548068*6834178925122906716</id>
    <updated>2023-06-27T22:06:11Z</updated>
    <author>
        <name>Breck Yunits</name>
        <email>breck7@gmail.com</email>
    </author>
    <entry>
        <category term='filter'></category>
        <title>Mail Filter</title>
        <id>tag:mail.google.com,2008:filter:z0000001687903548068*6834178925122906716</id>
        <updated>2023-06-27T22:06:11Z</updated>
        <content></content>
        <apps:property name='from' value='noreply@* | no-reply@* | donotreply@*'/>
        <apps:property name='label' value='NoReplySpam'/>
        <apps:property name='shouldArchive' value='true'/>
        <apps:property name='cannedResponse' value='tag:mail.google.com,2009:cannedResponse:188fee33e5d0226e'/>
        <apps:property name='sizeOperator' value='s_sl'/>
        <apps:property name='sizeUnit' value='s_smb'/>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <category term='cannedResponse'></category>
        <title>No no-reply email addresses</title>
        <id>tag:mail.google.com,2009:cannedResponse:188fee33e5d0226e</id>
        <updated>2023-06-27T22:06:11Z</updated>
        <content type='text'>Hi! Did you know instead of a "no reply" email address there are ways to provide a better customer experience?

Learn more: https://breckyunits.com/replies-always-welcome.html
</content>
    </entry>
</feed>

Specific examples

My claim is that no reply email address are always sub-optimal. Here are some examples, showing how in every case you can deliver a better customer experience without the noreply email. A great opportunity to get customer feedback!

My bank (Bank of Ireland) sends automated bi-monthly statements using noreply@boi.com

Bank of Ireland could instead end each email with a question such as "Anything we can do better? Let us know!" or "If you have any issues you need help with reply to start a new case!"

I follow many profiles on LinkedIn which sends me an occasional email on activities and updates that I might have missed using notifications-noreply@linkedin.com

Could be even as simple as replyWithAnythingToUnsubscribe@linkedin.com. Any replies will cause the account to stop receiving such notices.

GitHub sends me occasional emails about 3rd-party apps that have been granted access to my account using noreply@github.com

Could be a replyToDeauthorize@github.com instead.

Google Maps sends monthly updates on my car journeys via noreply-maps-timeline@google.com

Could be a replyToStopTracking@google.com

Monthly newsletters to which I am subscribed via LinkedIn come in via newsletters-noreply@linkedin.com

Could be a replyToUnsubscribe

e-Books available from a monthly subscription are available on noreply@thewordbooks.com

Could be a replyToLeaveAReview.

Replies always welcome