Our business management platform works in ways that may not be immediately clear as to why things are the way they are. Specifically you may receive emails from addresses that contain a Reply-to address. This article will present our email communications strategy so that you are aware of how to handle email communications from our domains.
First of all we use SMTP (email) for communications using encryption where possible (85% of all of our email communications are secured using TLS and the 15% that are not, are from traditional applications such as monitoring systems, printers, faxes, etc. and SPAM).
A note on our domains
Our email communications domains are generally spearhead.systems, spearhead.cloud and sphs.ro. Depending on the project you may also receive from a specific domain such as supercomputing.ro, or a sub-domain of spearhead.systems or spearhead.cloud such as veeam.spearhead.cloud.
All of our domains are secured and we adhere to DKIM, SPF and DMARC specifications. This works of course if your email communications infrastructure is up to date and configured correctly. Because all of our emails are digitally signed you can be quite sure that if an email from one of our domains has reached you, it is most likely safe. You should always apply caution and best practices before opening any email that is suspicious: screen your emails, always ask your technical teams if your are unsure.
A note on our email addresses
Our email addresses are generally of the form:
initials @ our domains
full name @ our domains
<business unit> @ our domains
<project id/name> @ our domains
<sales quote/ invoice> @ our domains
When we send an emais, we tag them using headers and other specialised methods to track communications. Because each email is tagged we can then use centralised communications strategies (our business management software in this case) which can "track" communications across specific issues/projects/sales orders/invoices.
More specifically this is achieved by sending from the account that generated the object (quote, invoice, etc.) or a shared mailbox (such as business, marketing, etc.). When you reply to such an email, the Reply-to address will automatically be completed therefore you may see, when replying, that the To: address field is one of catchall, business, info, marketing, business-europe, business-us, etc. This reply-to address is managed by our business management software and the emails are then routed to the correct mailbox, user, management application.
We also send emails via our individual email accounts, shared or group accounts such as sales, finance, etc and via our marketing platforms. These do not include a reply-to address, and are therefore not tracked by our management software. We do not encourage these direct communications when dealing with issues/projects/sales orders or invoices as they are dependent upon the availbility of a single person. We take advantage of modern email facilities such that we can all keep track of whats going on without worrying that something gets lost in the email communications cycle.
Thus, there are three scenarios that cover all of our email communications methods:
Sending emails from our individual accounts.
Sending emails from our shared accounts.
Sending emails from our marketing platforms.
Sending email from our individual accounts
When we send email from our individual email accounts, these will appear as any other email: with a From: address that is our business emails, and a From: name that is usually in the form of our initial @ our domains or First, Last name @ our domains.
Sending emails from our shared accounts
When we send via our shared accounts, such as finance, business or a specific project/issue/sales order/invoice, these will appear to have come from an email address such as "Spearhead <business unit>" where business unit can be sales, help (our tech support), business (our commercial department/sales), marketing as well as a number of specialised mailboxes for specific projects/requirements or other lines of business such as SO 132 Spearhead Systems or SUB 1234 Spearhead Systems.
When you reply to these emails, you will notice there will be a different reply-to address. That is because we use reply-to and specialised tracking method (generally an email header) that our managemnt software uses to route the emails to the respective applications/objects.
Visibility of such emails are restricted to the sender (the person you are discussing with) and their direct manager (sales, tech, marketing managers can "see" communications). Emails from our shared accounts are not actually shared, the From address is shared however, emails are never routed to anyone outside of our organisation or other members other than the owner of the project/issue/sales order/invoice and their direct managers.
Marketing emails
Our marketing systems also partake in the email communications strategy and as such often times will send emails using one or more aliases and or shared accounts. These are generally a do-not-reply type of email addresses but not always, we may sometimes send emails for a specific campaign and the email from address will reflect that campaign.
Things to be aware of when replying or forwarding
When you reply, the intention is to reply to the original sender (in this case it could our individual addresses or a shared mailbox which has a Reply-to (for example, business <at> spearhead.systems). If you wish to send our emails, internally to your colleagues, please use Forward, do not use the Reply button and then add/delete the addresses you want to send the message to. This article from Microsoft sheds some more light on when to use Reply, Forward and Reply to all.
Conclusion
We hope this article helps you understand why some of our emails will have a different reply-to address when you are replying to some of our communications. You can rest assured that our domains and email practices are secure and using modern accepted methods. If you are ever suspicious of an email you received, contact us or your technical support department to verify. If you need additional information regarding our email communications processes please feel to reach out.