Is your email address ruining your business?

“Do I need a business email address, or will gmail do?”  is a surprisingly common question amongst business owners, with many people unsure of whether they need to have a business specific email address or to simply stick with hotmail, gmail or yahoo to send out their business emails.

The reality is however, that along with your custom domain name, you also need a custom email address.

You might not think it but your email address is one of the most important factors in both your business and your overall brand and offering anything less than a professional, custom email address could hugely effect your business.

Why?

Unprofessional

Starting with the most obvious, a custom business email just looks more professional. For example, very few people will take a business seriously if they have to send an enquiry to a hotmail email address. The fact that it looks like a personal email address gives the impression that the enquiry might not be handled professionally by a real company, but also makes it seem like you care very little about looking like a legitimate business.

Building your brand

Having your own custom email address is important when it comes to creating and building your brand. A custom address makes your business more rememberable and recognisable in your customers inbox, establishing your brand and meaning that more customers are likely open your emails.

Flexibility

Owning your own custom email addresses means you have full control over your emails, meaning you can easily create new email address and remove inactive ones. A custom email system also means that you have more flexibility to create email addresses for different departments of your business.

Spam

Often free email addresses look like spam, having a random email address in your inbox with no indication that it’s a business will lead to people to delete your email without even reading it and in some cases, businesses have been known to block all free email addresses in order to avoid spam.

Think of your favourite brands, just how many of them use a free email address such as hotmail or gmail, and for good reason, it doesn’t look professional, a successful company wouldn’t dream of using a free email address, it gives the impression of low budget and little effort, something you don’t want associated with your website.