Which email address do you use for business purposes? If it’s the email address of your business domain, then that’s the best answer. Let’s explore the dos and don’ts of email addresses and what they project to clients.
Don’ts
First, the don’ts. Here are some email addresses to immediately stop using in front of clients:
- Emails ending in aol.com (or prodigy.com). Why? Because you look like a tech dinosaur, just like the AOL (or Prodigy) brand. The last thing you want to do in this day and age is telegraph (pun intended) that you’re 20 years behind in your technology expertise.
- Emails ending in yahoo.com or hotmail.com (includes msn.com and live.com). Yahoo, MSN, and Hotmail are not much better. There was a HUGE security breach a few years back as well as the fact that Yahoo’s brand is dated and more personal than business. Hotmail just sounds cheap and dated.
- Emails provided by your internet service. These end in verizon.net, att.net, comcast.net, and others. While not awful, you end up providing marketing exposure for the telecoms instead of your own brand.
The email deliverability of the above emails is very questionable. It’s very likely you won’t receive perfectly good email, including from prospects who want to purchase your services. And if you use one of these emails and wonder why you don’t get leads, it might just be your email deliverability failure.
Not the Best, But Not the Worst
- Emails ending in Outlook.com. This one’s not horrible, but not great either. It promotes the Microsoft brand instead of yours.
- Emails ending in gmail.com. Of all the free emails, if you have to use a free email, I recommend this one. The deliverability is better than the ones above.
- Emails with private domains but that you don’t own. This includes the cpa.com emails. You miss out on marketing your own brand and instead market your CPA, which is not awful, but not ideal.
Dos
The best email for you to use is your own domain email. If you have more than one domain, use the one that matches your website. Here at ThriveFuel, we use @thrivefuel.com and most of the emails contain our first names.
Use cloud email as your email application, such as Office 365 or GSuite. Avoid using info@ because of spam. Instead, I like these names for a support email:
- Support@
- Service@
- Hello@
- CustomerCare@
- Solutions@
- ContactUs@
- GetAnswers@
- Office@
When you use your own domain for your email, you promote your business and website with every email you send. Who wouldn’t want that?
Your own domain email also eliminates any question about your technology expertise because at the very least, it shows you’re smart enough to set up your own email (or hire someone to do it). And you can control deliverability and security through technology.
So don’t miss out on a perfectly good marketing opportunity: Using your domain email when communicating with clients will enhance your brand, increase your website traffic, and have you looking far more professional and polished.