Sending Emails From a Fake Persona

[Anonymous]

Currently, all emails come from real people within the organization depending on the content (marketing, customer success, sales, etc.), but we're exploring the idea of using a fake persona for communications going forward.

I'm interested in hearing other people's experiences using fake personas to deliver emails — successes, failures, what to avoid and what to recreate.

[Josh_Hill13]

I second Justin's thought. It can be dangerous unless that persona is known to the person who picks up the phone or there's an email box you are monitoring as a team.

A better way to handle this is to have a real person, but use a fake box. For instance, I've used the middle initial in the email box even though the person's real box was something else.

josh.hill@company.com is my real box
josh.d.hill@company.com is a fake box that goes to marketing. Thus, marketing reviews and filters. If I need to respond, I do, otherwise it goes to sales. This helps avoid getting reverse spam or inundated with useless requests or crazy people.

[Anonymous]

You also have the option to create a mailbox that you department shares. Something like Information@...
And sending marketing emails from it. This is what we do and when a client replies to it, we just redirect it to the right person.
It avoids problems mentionned by Justin above.

[Anonymous]

We did this very briefly a few years ago. It was actually quite awkward in cases where someone called and asked to speak to so-and-so who didn't exist 🙂 

We had good intentions but at the end of the day we felt it undermined the authenticity of our communications and our brand.

We now use real personas exclusively -- our VP Product for product news, our account reps for account related stuff, and me for our "stay-in-touch" content nurturing. It feels a lot better. 

I have no doubt you have sound business logic behind the idea (perhaps avoiding issues when one of your personas leaves the company, etc.) but these benefits may be offset by a less genuine connection between you and your customers.

My take is that people like engaging with real people, even when they are engaging with brands.