Is your business still using a gmail, yahoo, shasta or other public email addresses to communicate with your customers? If so, you’re missing out on an opportunity to present your business in a professional, organized manner.
Most businesses get hundreds and even thousands of solicitations via email every day. So it’s really important to have a great first impression. If you use a free email service or email address that ends with a domain that doesn’t match your business, that may come off as unprofessional or incompetent to your potential business prospects. Your business is full of individuals that are hardworking and dedicated to their craft and you want your email to show that as well. Having a great branding strategy is crucial to a business’s success and your email address should include your brand.
Not convinced that you need a custom email address? Here are just a few reasons why you absolutely need one for your business:
1. @Gmail or @Yahoo Screams ‘Unprofessional!’
Quick, look into your email inbox. Did you see a large number of email addresses that end with @yahoo.com or @gmail.com? Did you also notice that most of those emails just have the person’s first name and an initial for the last name with a string of numbers (example: johnr1989@gmail.com)? As you can see, they all start to blend in and that is the last thing you want in marketing for your business.
You want your business to stand out. It has to be easy to find in that large list of emails. If a client wants to quickly find your emails, all they have to do is search, “yourdomain.com” and they can find you effortlessly. You want to have your prospective customers use as little as effort as possible to find you and having a custom email domain helps!
While Shasta.com, Gmail and Yahoo are perfectly fine for personal emails, any business that is using them can come off as unprofessional. Consumers expect an email and a website domain name to match. It tends to raise unnecessary questions when they don’t. Can the business be trusted? Are they too cheap to purchase a domain email? Do they not care about their image?
All these ambiguities and questions hurt the first impression you are trying to make, and as we all know, first impressions do count.
2. You’re Already Paying for It
If you’ve purchased a domain name and set up your website with prime42, then you already have the ability to use that domain for your email addresses! Setting up your email account is easy and free! In some cases, you don’t even need to have your website hosted by us and we can still help! Just give our technical support staff a call at 530-691-0042 and they’ll get the ball rolling!
3. When Someone Leaves Your Company, You Keep Control
What happens when your salesperson leaves, taking her personal email address with her? If she was using it to conduct business for your organization, you won’t be able to access those emails.
On the other hand, if you set up an account under her name, you can redirect those emails to go to your newly hired salesperson. Or, you could create a generic email for certain roles, like sales@ourbusiness.com so that the new hire just takes over that account.
4. A Branded Email Does Your Marketing For You
Have you ever seen someone’s email address on a business card and looked up the website because you were curious? That doesn’t happen with free email addresses. Your email addresses should appear in each employee’s email signature, as well as on business cards and your other marketing materials. Every place you have that branded email address displayed is one more opportunity to attract new business!
5. You Can Create as Many Emails as You Want
Even if you’re a one-person operation, you can create emails for different purposes like sales, customer service, orders, etc. This can give the impression that your company is larger than it is (which is not a bad thing), and in the event that one day you hire for those roles, you can simply assign those email addresses to other employees.
Done correctly, it can even improve your productivity! How many times have you had to search through emails from your vendors trying to find that email that came in from a new client? With multiple addresses, you can segregate your emails and make finding what you want much faster!
First impressions are everything, and how potential customers see you will determine how successful your brand will be. Not only does a branded email address deliver a level of professionalism, it allows your users to send and receive mail that is consistent with the business’s brand. Consider your email address your calling card, and make it memorable!
If you take yourself seriously as a small business owner, you need to set up a professional email address. No matter what kind of website you have, a custom email address to match your website’s domain can help you achieve your goals. Contact prime42 today and get the process started!
