Almost every business relies on email to keep in touch with clients, suppliers, and industry news. Likewise, most businesses will have a website to promote themselves, their products, and services. If you have a website, you have a URL – the bit that identifies your website as your own (www.fivecomputing.com).
If you have a URL, you also have the right to use that address in your emails (dave@fivecomputing.com) – so WHY are you using a Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook etc email address?
First Impressions Count
Like it or not, when you contact a potential new client or business associate, a generic email can come across as lacking in professionalism and integrity. The only thing worse than making a bad impression is making no impression at all.
Credibility Matters
It can take a long time to build trust and credibility and using a generic email address won’t help either of these. Using an email address associated to your web domain or business name also gives you accountability. A generic email can dent your brand credibility and reputation in an instant.
Your URL is an Investment
Web-based generic email addresses may be free to set up, but then you’re in danger of relaying the message to the outside world that you really don’t give two hoots about investing in an email address to match your business name/web site. Furthermore, sites like Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and Outlook are mostly there for the general public – not businesses.
Forget About Promoting Your Brand
A generic email won’t work as a marketing tool for your brand or business. Joe456plumber@anywhere.com doesn’t say the same as joe@joesplumbingservices.com.
And When It All Goes Wrong
Like all technology, email will fail from time to time. Getting support from Gmail and the like can be a frustrating and fruitless exercise – often leading the account holder to create another account and start all over again from scratch in exasperation. Having an email address to match your website and hosted by a reputable source means that when things go wrong they can be rectified – without losing business (or your sanity) in the process.
Setting up a business email account to match your web domain is simple to do and won’t cost the earth. If this is something Five Computing can help you with, we’d love to hear from you.