I prefer companyname@domain.com because I've noticed that sometimes in gmail and other mail clients the email address is rendered as just the local part (the part before the @ sign), and I want customers to see something meaningful instead of just "hello" or "contact".
That's true for emails the company sends the customer, but not true for emails the customer sends the company (unless they're replying to an email or using their address book). Point is, I've seen only the local part get rendered even when I send from a From: address that properly includes the name.
Depending on your structure and size, I'd suggest just doing a catch-all so any of these will work and so emails to the wrong email address (anything@mydomain.com) will get to the general inbox.
That being said, I think hello@ or team@ are most friendly and general enough. Help@ and support@ seem to not welcome sales or pre-sales inquiries.
but in practice, any of the addresses listed there
will be the targets of a lot of spam - so I would
avoid using those as live working addressses.
You could perhaps put a powerful spam filter in front of sales@ and
info@ and see if any pearls pass through it - if anyone at your
company can spare the time for that - up to you.
Otherwise, the exact addresses you use are less important,
as long as Joe Random customer/vendor/outsider can
understand which address (or contact form) to use.
If your company is in an established niche, you might
follow any patterns that exist in that niche - check
your own address book for ideas.
I find it interesting that marketing tactics of the past few years have been very focused on "telling a story" and humanizing the creators behind the website (photos of the team on the "about" page, etc) yet we continue to use email addresses like "contact" and "sales" and generic contact form pages, "submit a support ticket" pages, etc. My selection of "howdy" was the most basic thing I could do to create that kind of endearing outstretched hand. That said, the right answer to the OP's question is probably to create "contact","support", "company name", "webmaster" etc -- all of the above, and route them to some common mailbox. That way if the customer can't figure out the right email address and takes a guess, it should get to the right place. The related question is "is putting an email address on the site enough?" or "if I put a contact us form on the site, do I also need a catch-all email address?" I'd say, you need a minimum of both.
Grating? Really? Would "hello@domain.com" have any better connotation? I use funny greetings like "howdy" in regular conversation because it has the effect of disarming people. You can often do the same thing with an overly formal greeting "Good Day, Mr. Jones" - people can't help but crack a smile.
So I'm curious as a non-American (non-native English speaker?) what you would find an actually welcoming, non-trite greeting? "Howdy" is an old, informal rural greeting found everywhere in the US, somewhat like what I suppose "g'day" is in Australia. Would you find "g'day" grating as well?
I also dislike "howdy" (and "g'day"), but I wouldn't necessarily go to "grating". Depends on my mood.
I think the issue partially stems from the fact that the internet can be seen as culturally removed. So if I visit someone in the US I expect to encounter their culture, and I am prepared for it. Same for Australia. However, on the internet I expect something more culturally neutral like "hello".
But then again, maybe it's just that certain words/phrases/accents annoy certain people, and you can't please all the people all the time
I would divide it up by business functions. "Contact", "team" etc are very generic. For example, both an exisiting customer and a prospective customer could tehcnically be "contacting" you. But you want to differentiate there.
I would go for something like:
Sales: sales@xyz.com
Customer Support: customersupport@xyz.com
Press release/inquiry: press@xyz.com
Partners/vendors etc: partner@xyz.com
Anything else: hello@xyz.com (This can be creative as you like)
I think such a scheme is customer-unfriendly, especially for a small company where there isn't a compelling organizational need to have separate email addresses. For example, if an existing customer wants to both place a new order and get customer support, should they be expected to send two emails, one to sales and another to support? Also, I've noticed that once a customer gets a company's email address in their address book, that's the only email address they ever use. I've seen this first hand with customers emailing the support address to place new orders.
Well it is a little unfriendly (many emails to remember?) but I think it does help. While in a small company we tend to have overlapping roles, slowly our roles become more concrete. When that happens, a mail to say payments@ will immediately tell the payments guy that he has to do something although many others may be cc-ed. Or it may tell the customer that sending a mail to the specific topic email address might get a faster response.
Secondly, like how we all know that company.com/about usually takes us to the team page, the press might try to hit up press@. There is always a fallback - the contactus@ but when the number of emails start exploding, it helps when tagging emails by purpose.
I posted this question precisely to avoid having too many aliases. I'd like the equivalent of "dialing 0" from your hotel room phone, and getting redirected by the front desk based on your request.
[partially related] Do you reply as, e.g., support@mydomain.com, or from you personal email myname@domain.com? Do you use a real or fake person to address customer support queries?
Personally I would go with:
askcompanyname@mydomain.com
Because as JacobH stated, "contact" feels to formal.
Everything else has all ready been recommended, ie:
support@mydomain.com for CUSTOMER support.
press@mydomain.com for dealing with vultures.
partners.partnername@mydomain.com for partners.
I'd make my catch-all something like "generalinfo@mydomain.com"
How about ask@domain? It clearly states that you're open to answer any kind of question from customers and/or partners, and it's neither too formal (like sales@, support@, accounting@) nor hipster-casual (say, hello@, howdy@, yourfriends@ and so on).
Then you might also want to use team@domain for announcements but that's it.
The problem with this is that as you expand, most of your customers will not expand with you.
So they may start using contact@ to communicate directly with the founding team; two years later they will use contact@ and get the intern who is supposed to redirect email (and may not do a great job of it).
If you start out with the 4 or 5 standard options (at least splitting tech support from sales), they may initially all be mailing lists that go to all founders -- then you can direct them appropriately later as you specialize... and your clients/customers won't need to change anything.
If you really just want one email for everything, go with team@mydomain.com. All the other choices imply a purpose for the email (e.g., first contact or help with a problem).
