I agree. I personally feel that if you're either unwilling or unable to handle the responses you might receive, then you shouldn't send the email in the first place.
Responses generally consist of a large amount of out of office messages, various undeliverable and error messages from remote mail servers, and the occasional auto-response which triggers your own auto-response, which triggers theirs which ends up in a mail loop that takes down email for your whole company.
Many traditional businesses outsource most of their technical solutions and don't have the staff or the knowledge to deal with things like this.
I respectfully disagree with that position as a general rule. The wide variety of reasons for emails is more nuanced. Reality is more than all or nothing, 0 or 1.
Can you elaborate?
I'm struggling to find a valid example of a one way mail stream from company to customers where all customers will never want to reply yet still want to get these mails.
It's impossible to say that "all people will never want to do X", as there are some strange people out there. However, there are many emails that I want that I would never want to reply to.
When I order something I like getting the emails saying 'your package has been shipped...", and they typically come from a donotreply address.
I follow a number of repositories on Github, their notifications come from noreply.github.com.
I also like knowing when there are new versions of various assets I've gotten from the Unity asset store, these notifications come from no-reply@unity3d.com.
I am subscribed to the headlines from my local newspapers, one of them is delivered from noreply@patch.com.
My utility company sends payment confirmation emails from noreply@unitil.com.
I like knowing about the occasional blog post from authors I follow on Goodreads, these come from no-reply@mail.goodreads.com
I like knowing when games on my Steam wishlist go on sale, these notifications come from noreply@steampowered.com
In several of my past positions, a large part of my job was purchasing. As such, I needed the many industry newsletters I was subscribed to. In the manufacturing industry, these are one of the easiest ways to find out about new products.
I do some work as a graphic designer, and I like getting the emails from various sites that sell - and often give away - assets.
> When I order something I like getting the emails saying 'your package has been shipped...", and they typically come from a donotreply address.
I almost never want to reply to these. On the rare occasion when there’s a problem with the shipment, however, replying to this email feels like the right thing to do.
