Role-based email address

A role-based address is tied to a function, not a person. Common examples are info@, sales@, support@, admin@, billing@ and hello@. These addresses often reach several people, or a ticket system, or no one who cares about your message.

For cold email they are a poor target. Reply rates are low, and the risk is high: several people see your email and any of them can mark it as spam. Some roles, like abuse@ or postmaster@, are watched by people whose job is to deal with spam, so writing to them can do harm.

The usual advice is to remove role-based addresses from a cold list and find a named person with the right job title. There are exceptions, for example in a small business where info@ is the owner's own inbox. If you keep a few, send them in a small separate batch and watch the results. Use a detector to flag these addresses before you import a list.