An email address with the name of your business in the domain (Jim@acmecompany.com) helps you build a professional image and increases your brand’s credibility. It just looks more authoritative and professional than a message that comes from an Outlook, Yahoo, or Gmail domain.
Here’s why… and the reasons you can’t remain without a business email account.
A Corporate Email Domain Shows Exactly Who You Are
When consumers see an @gmail.com or other generic suffix at the end of an email’s reply-to address, they start asking themselves questions:
- Who is this person?
- How do I know they really work at that company?
- Why didn’t they pay for an email account? Is the company that short of cash?
- Why didn’t they set up an email account? Are they that short of technical competence?
When you’re not using a business address, those questions arise in every correspondence. And businesses send a lot of professional email. You send them for order and shipping confirmations. You send them for customer support and to communicate with suppliers. You provide information and perform email marketing. Each of those emails should present your business in a professional way. Every communication should deepen trust, not raise doubts.
Without a Business Account, You Are Just Another Spammer
If you rely heavily on emails to communicate with your customers, such as by sending newsletters and autoresponders, there’s another risk in using free email accounts.
Many of these accounts are used to scam and spam. By associating your image with a third party over which you have no control, you don’t just face the skepticism those addresses generate. You also risk your messages not arriving at all.
A number of mail servers have blacklisted free domains. A newsletter sent from a Hotmail account, for example, is more likely to end up in your recipients’ spam folder than their inbox. In fact, it might not even be delivered.
Choosing a Hosting Service Is Easy
Creating a positive first impression of yourself and your business is easy.
There are a number of hosting services that allow you to create both the website domain and email account in one go. A quick Google search is enough to find a solution tailored to your needs. You can also choose the number of email addresses you want to create and the size of the storage space.
Leave AOL, Outlook, and Gmail to private communications. If you really want to read work-related messages through one of these clients, you can always set the office mailbox to forward emails to your personal account.
If you want people to take you and your business seriously, you need to use a professional email account with @businessname in the suffix.
