As people get more and more selective about which emails to read and which directly goes to either spam or promotional folders, the people’s first impression of your business’ online presence has never been this huge. Now, the question is, how do you create a good first impression of your business? The first step is to have your own business-branded email address.
First impressions, authority and legitimacy, trust and credibility, and affordability – these are only four of the (possibly) endless benefits you can get from having a professional, branded email address. But if you need more reasons to get one, here are six more reasons why:
1. Unlimited, easy-to-memorize username options
Despite the authoritative and serious impression of professional email addresses, they actually promote simplicity. With free email services, finding a username can be difficult – which is why you might need to add a string of numbers and additional characters to make it work. While this won’t be a big deal for personal emails, this can post an unprofessional impression when used as business emails.
Who would you trust more, a company with an email address like strawberry.jamsforsale_2010@gmail.com or sales@strawberryjammer.com? Of course, the one proudly displaying their business name.
With a professional email address, you’ll never have to face this dilemma anymore. As long as you have your own unique domain name, you don’t have to worry about running out of available usernames ever again.
2. It grows with your business
You might have started as a solo entrepreneur, but witnessed tremendous growth in your business that you had to expand and hire more employees. And of course, you have to create separate business emails for them. You’ll have two options for this – a free email address or a professional, branded email address.
Which do you think would look more professional and easy to remember – companyname_sarah@gmail.com or sarah@companyname.com? It’s the latter, right? Not only it looks better, but having your employees’ email addresses under your domain name will also make it easier to pitch in more employees as your business grows.
Aside from the convenience it offers, as your employee directory grows, the domain name that comes with your business-branded email address becomes a huge part of your brand identity. It stays throughout the lifetime of your business, which not only creates an impression of professionalism, but also your dedication for long-term branding.
3. Take full control and ownership of your communications
One lucky day and your business is finally starting to reach more people, receiving more and more emails from people inquiring to buy your products in bulk. But suddenly an unknown email glitch suspended your account – what will you do?
With a free email address, there’s really nothing you can do but wait and contact your domain provider. Understanding how your domain provider isn’t only catering to your business, getting a response just when you need it is almost uncertain. With a professional email address, however, you can take whatever appropriate action is needed to keep your communication lines back on track.
4. Directly reach out to specific departments
Now, let’s take the point-of-view of your customers. Say, one of your customers is looking for technical assistance on how to install your product. With a free email address, he/she needs to find your authentic email address first, or if your company has multiple free email addresses, the one that’s under technical support.
With a professional email address, however, he/she can directly contact the concerned department – which in this case, might be the techsupport@company.com. This results in faster response time for your customers and a greater productivity rate for your employees – both of which are win-win scenarios.
5. New employees? No problem!
Have the convenience of easily providing additional email addresses for new employees. You don’t have to worry that the name “anne” is already taken at Gmail because you have your own business-branded domain that lets you create anne@yourcompanyname.com.
6. Direct your emails by department
You might be already aware of how professional email addresses allows customers to directly reach out to their concerned departments – which is the definition of convenience. Your domain name alone might already give your customers an idea of how to find your website.
However, let’s take it on an employee’s point-of-view. By having your company’s email addresses organized by department, this removes the hassle of endless forwarding customer emails until they reach the concerned department. Not only this is naturally convenient, but also allows your employees to quickly get ahold of urgent, internal concerns.
The Bottom Line
Every business, including yours, should have a professional email address to be able to present yourself as a trustworthy and transparent brand – which ultimately leads to brand awareness and customer loyalty.
Luckily, having your own professional email address isn’t as complicated as you might think. Explore these email packages from CreatingSkies to have your business name as part of your email address and be ten folds more professional.