I’m a proponent of also including a brand signal in the subject if possible. I know there have been studies downplaying the efficacy, but having a brand denoted in the 30 or so characters of the subject reaffirms who you are as a sender and why the email will ring relevant with subscribers.

Finally, a friendly from is more effective when a group or division instead of a person. I don’t know who Joe Smith is, but if I get an email from “Important Updates” instead, I’m more likely to open it and engage.

No sense in using a name that the recipient isn’t familiar with – especially when you consider that most email programs are going to truncate the “from” line around 20-25 characters (apparently fewer than that in your case). The part after the comma isn’t even going to show up for a lot of people.

I tend to think it’s a combination of ignorance and arrogance, i.e. “you’ll know who Justin and Dawn are because you’ve been reading every email we’ve ever sent and taking notes, because our work is so darn important that you couldn’t not possibly be doing so.”