Why Your Business Needs Professional Email

Organization

First, a quick refresher: a business email address will look something like [email protected]. Meanwhile, a personal email address will be something like [email protected].

Now then, think of your personal inbox. If you use more than one email address, think of the one you use most often.

Unless you’re highly organized and really good at deleting your emails, that inbox is probably pretty jam-packed. It can already be hard to sort the emails you want to read from all the ones you don’t really care about. If you add business emails to your personal inbox, things will get even more cluttered.

Credibility

We’re awash in scams these days. It’s one of many reasons millennials hate to answer their phones! If you email a customer from a Gmail or Yahoo account, it’s fair for them to wonder if you’re a legitimate business or someone engaging in a little light fraud in their spare time.

A professional email address tied to your company’s name ([email protected]) sends a signal that you’ve bothered to set up both a domain and a business email account. It shows that you’re willing to put in the work to build a solid business identity, which makes it more likely that the customer will decide to keep reading your email instead of immediately clicking delete or, worse, clicking the “Spam” button.

To put it another way: If you give off a vibe that says you can’t take your business seriously, why should customers assume you’ll take them seriously? Remember, you’re trying to build a sense of trust and credibility from the very first time you make contact with a potential customer.

What else goes into a business identity?

A business identity is the public face your business presents to your world. In addition to your business email address or addresses, it’s your website, social media presence, business address, phone number, and more.For instance, most customers would expect to dial a local phone number if they’re trying to reach a local business. If you have an unfamiliar area code, that may give them pause as they try to figure out if you’re trustworthy.

Branding

Using a professional business email address can boost your branding opportunities. Your domain is right there in the email, which can encourage people to give your website a look whereas they might not have before. But if you’re emailing from a Gmail or Yahoo account, anyone who wants to check out your website will have to find it first.

Sending emails from your own business domain is more memorable, and that’s important in a world where potential customers get marketing emails galore. You need a good pitch, sure, but you also need a memorable email address.

You can also create more than one custom business address if you need it. For instance, as your company grows, you could set up your business email so both sales and accounting have their own separate addresses and inboxes.

Security

A personal email account through, say Gmail, has one security standard, but a business email account has a higher industry standard. When you’re dealing with potentially sensitive customer information, that’s important.

A business email offers better spam filters and encryption, among other things. Customers are sending you information like their address because they want a product shipped there, not because they want hackers or spammers to access it.

Why is a custom email address important for businesses?

A custom branded business email (aka one that ends with your domain name rather than a domain owned by someone else) ensures your image is consistent. For many people, a Gmail address is what they expect to see when they email their aunt photos of their new dog, not what they expect to see when they’re contacting a credible, professional business.

It may help to take a closer look at the parts of an email address. We’ll use [email protected] as an example. The part before the @ symbol is sometimes called the username. The part after the @ symbol is known as the email provider’s domain.

Think of an email address as parts of an outfit. The outfit should feel balanced and well put-together. Using “businessname” for the first part but having Gmail.com or hotmail.com as your domain is like wearing a pressed suit jacket with cut-off jorts.