Glossary
Role address
Also called role account, generic address.
Last reviewed 18 September 2026
What is a role address?
A role address is one that belongs to a function rather than to a person, of the info, support or sales kind, and it is read by several people, by nobody, or by a ticket system.
Mailing one is riskier than mailing a person for two reasons. Nobody at a shared mailbox has personally agreed to anything, so a complaint is likelier; and several of the addresses used as spam traps are role addresses, precisely because a role address that never signed up for anything is a good way to catch a sender who did not ask.
A confirmation step settles this without a blocklist. Somebody has to open the mailbox and click, which is exactly the evidence a role address otherwise cannot give you.
See also
- Confirmed opt-in
Confirmed opt-in, usually called double opt-in, is the practice of sending one message to a newly submitted address and adding it to a list only after somebody clicks the link in that message.
- Disposable email domain
A disposable email domain is one that hands out addresses which expire or forward nowhere after a short period, typed by people who want the thing being offered without the mail that comes with it.
- Spam complaint rate
A spam complaint rate is the count of people who pressed the spam or junk button divided by the mail delivered to that provider over a window it chooses, and Google and Yahoo both name 0.3 per cent as the level to stay under and 0.1 per cent as the level to aim at.
Read next
Every other term is on the glossary index , the longer writing is in the guides, and what this site itself does is on the home page.
Thinking of writing one of these?
5dayemail hosts a five-to-ten day email course: you write it once, and everyone who joins your list gets one email a day, in order, starting from the day they confirm.
Accounts are opened a few at a time rather than by signing up. Leave your address and you will be written to when the next ones open.
One message, when there is room. No course emails, no newsletter, and the address is not passed on. Ask and it is deleted; what is kept, and for how long, is in the privacy policy.