With VipeCloud, you can send emails in several ways, and one of those includes using free / generic emails (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.). These types of emails are most commonly used for personal email addresses because they're free and easy to set up.
However, there are some drawbacks to using these emails for mass emails. We'll cover some of those limitations in this article.
What Is The Difference?
The biggest difference between a generic and professional email is that with a generic email, you are sending on behalf of a domain (a web address - i.e. yourdomain.com) that you don't own and whose delivery policies you have no control over.
Example generic email: johnswidgets@gmail.com
Example professional email: john@johnswidgets.com
Downsides to not sending on behalf of your own domain are:
- Software like VipeCloud can't be authenticated to send on behalf of your email in a white labled manner.
- You have to share a sending domain with other marketers, which can make for lower deliverability.
- You can't take advantage of Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI), which is a newer type of verification that allows you to include your logo in some email client inboxes.
Inbox Sync
Inbox sync is a feature that allows VipeCloud to track inbound emails to your email address. This enables the tracking of responses to your email campaigns and the ability to look up a contact record and see a complete two-way history of correspondence - not just the outbound emails that you sent to the contact.
This feature is only available for professional email setups that can be set up using OAuth (such as Google Workspace and professional Microsoft 365) or IMAP.
Generic Emails Rely On "Reply-To"
As mentioned before, when you are sending emails on behalf of a generic email address and are unable to truly route emails through that domain's server using separate email marketing or sales software, you have to route your emails through a generic sending domain such as "John Widget <johnswidgets.gmail.com@vcmsr.com>". This address sends on your behalf and if a recipient replies, the "reply-to" is set to your actual email address.
There's a growing trend in the email world for reply-to's to not be honored 100% of the time. It makes some sense because there's a security risk for a phishing bait-n-switch to take place. This would involve a bad actor spoofing your email (illegitimately sending on behalf of your email) and then routing replies back to themselves using a reply-to.
Gmail is particularly problematic in this regard, often not honoring a reply-to for the first email that one of their users receives from a sender who is not in their contact list, but honoring subsequent emails' reply-to's to work.
Security Risks
It might seem counterintuitive, but you are actually putting your business at a greater risk for security incidents by using a free email address.
Firstly, these giant email services are a big target for attacks because they have, and can give access to, so much valuable information. Yes, Google and Yahoo have world-class security teams defending against these attacks, but breaches still happen (see: Yahoo's data breaches that involved over half a billion accounts).
Next, it's too easy to phish using similarly-spelled free email addresses.
Let's use our johnswidgets@gmail.com example again.
If an attacker wants to impersonate John, they could create j0hnswidgets@gmail.com or johns-widgets@gmail.com.
Impersonating a professional email address is certainly not impossible, but it's much more difficult. The emails are far more likely to go to spam or get flagged with security warnings in the recipient's inbox. You also have protections available such as DMARC.
Customer Service
Simply put - professional email comes with personalized customer service and free email doesn't (unless you count online forums). If you have a professional email system and are a VipeCloud customer, you not only have the VipeCloud team ready to help where we can, but you also have a direct line to Google/Microsoft/etc as well, should you run into issues.
How To Avoid These Issues?
Buying a domain (if you don't already have one) and a professional email setup is your best solution. It's almost certainly worth the minimal cost to have the added deliverability, professional look, admin controls, customer service, security, and more.
Even if email marketing isn't something that you are currently exploring, domain age and reputation are key factors in your ability to successfully deliver email campaigns, so you'll be well-positioned for future email campaigns if you establish a sending domain ahead of time.
We pride ourselves on our support and understand that these technical issues can get confusing quickly, so if you have questions about any of this, we'd be happy to help.