Hey there,
I don't know about you but I've been browsing my emails with a bigger than usual dose of suspicion today. April Fools' Day is the one day of the year where big brands get to play tricks on their customers and get away with it.
(Nothing to worry about here - my kids have already played enough tricks on me today that the whole thing has crossed the line from mildly entertaining to seriously annoying, so I won't be continuing the trend.)
But the email that really got me was from my bank. They sent me a letter, telling me they're refunding every fee I've ever paid since I opened the account.
I would have been suspicious of this on any day of the year. A message from my bank saying they owe me money is basically the opening line of every scam email I've ever received. But on April 1st?
Do banks even do April Fools'? Is that a thing? I've never seen a bank attempt humor before but there's a first time for everything.
I googled it before I did anything else and it turns out it's actually real and loads of people have had the same letter. But talk about awkward timing…
Which made me think about the last time I actually looked at any of my own site's emails from the other side. Not whether the DNS records are set up (I talk about that enough in these newsletters, sorry) but what the emails actually look like when they arrive. The from name, the subject line, how the whole thing feels when you're the person receiving it.
I was editing some automated emails I set up on a new platform not that long ago and realised the from address was still set to a temporary test email. Not the best first impression. (It's a quick fix in WordPress if you've done the same thing.)
The bar for what counts as "trustworthy" keeps getting higher too. The security company Malwarebytes stopped doing any kind of April 1st content this year because their own jokes were looking too similar to actual scams.
The bad spelling and dodgy formatting that used to give scams away are basically gone now. So your real emails are competing with fakes that look just as professional. And if you want to make sure nobody's sending emails pretending to be you, that's worth checking too.
And on the subject of transactional emails specifically: A food delivery app sent fake order confirmations on April 1st a few years back ("you ordered 38 anchovy pizzas for €466") and customers panicked, called their banks to report fraud, and they had to publicly apologize.
People don't question transactional emails. They just react. Which is exactly why yours need to actually look like they came from a real business.
If you haven't actually looked at your site's emails from a customer's perspective in a while (or ever), it's worth ten minutes. I put together a guide on auditing all the emails your WordPress site sends and you might be surprised how many there are.
Audit Your WordPress Emails →
Until next time,
Rachel
Product Educator, WP Mail SMTP
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