What Does Your Email Address Say About You?

Part of running a business is building your brand. Your brand will give a recognizable impression of what your business offers, what it is about, and what it stands for.

Branding Baby!

Branding goes far beyond just making sure that you have a cool logo. Everything you do and every decision you make will reflect on your brand. This is why it is so important to have a consistent branding presentation from your website to your social accounts.

And what are the most important things that are many times underestimated? First, have a domain name email address that matches your website domain. Many who have a website with a domain don’t use that domain for email. Instead, contacts and customers see a gmail.com, yahoo.com, or hotmail.com email address. Boo!

Your email address will be the first impression anyone has about you because it is the first thing they see in their inbox. So, when communicating about business-related or professional activities, you want to make the best impression possible—including the fact that you are tech-savvy.

You must always use your domain name email address for business communications or those related to your professional life. That’s called branding and how true professionals do business.

Examples: jo**@jo**********.com or ja**@ja***************.com

Using your domain name, you also build awareness for your website with every email you send.

Don’t Use Freebie Email Addresses for Business

Not jo**********@ao*.com (which shows you are most likely techno-challenged and have yet to make the jump to using technology seriously) or ja**@gm***.com . While just fine for personal communications, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, and MSN addresses all give a less-than-stellar impression of how seriously you take your business and your use of technology.

Why are you building those brands and not your own?

Freebie accounts smack of a lack of tech-savvy. Replying to a business inquiry with a yahoo.com account could lead potential partners and contacts to wonder if you can use technology efficiently. Will communicating with you be more difficult? Possibly.

Using a freebie account will make your email communications unnecessarily problematic. You must make a concerted and consistent effort to get your freebie email address whitelisted by your contacts. Count on it being blocked occasionally or ending up in your recipient’s junk/spam folder.

You Are The Company You Keep

Free email services are considered “throw-away accounts” because spammers use them and then shut the account down. However, using your company domain name (even if the domain name is your name) is inexpensive — about ten U.S. dollars.

Why would you not use your domain email? I’m still waiting for a valid argument against using throw-away accounts instead of your domain name.

Business Email Address Branding Tips

Here are some tips when setting up your domain name email addresses:

Do not use info@. That is an email address that spammers target. Instead, think of something more creative: hello@, contact@, letstalk@. Anything but info@, which will increase your spam levels exponentially.
Having a few primary addresses in place makes sense for organizing your efforts. You can then set up filters/rules in your email program to recognize these addresses and send them to their folder when they are sent and downloaded.
social@ for use on all your social accounts
billing@ or invoice@ for all your account receivable activities
contact@ for your website contact forms
affiliates@ or partners@ for your partnership activities
legal@ for your brand and copyright protection activities
orders@, returns@, customercare@ for your e-commerce activities
All personnel should have emails in a consistent format: johnd@ or jdoe@
Refrain from using dashes. Never use underscores.
While you can use other characters and periods, do not do so. (Reference RFC822) Sticking with an alphanumeric structure avoids possible system problems while keeping emails easy to remember.
Keep addresses short and sweet (applies to domain names as well)—for example, randrd@ vs. re************************@yo********.com .

Business Means Branding!

As with anything related to your business’s success, this is only one small investment that will significantly impact how your business is perceived. Branding is everything.

If you still need your domain name, my consulting website has some Domain Tips for you to consider before registering and using it. Then, integrate that domain email at all your contact touchpoints and social accounts.

To have a viable and successful business means potential customers expect you to have a quality website and use technology appropriately. Therefore, your domain email address is invaluable for building trust and providing efficient customer service.

Now that you know the importance of having your domain email, what are you waiting for?

What Does Your Email Address Say About You?

Branding Baby!

Don’t Use Freebie Email Addresses for Business