Why every entrepreneur must have a professional email address.

If you take yourself seriously as a small business owner, and want others to perceive you as such, you need to setup a custom email address.

I know it’s tempting to just put together a Gmail or Yahoo email address with your company name when starting your company.  You have bigger expenses to worry about than subscribing to an email service and buying a domain name. But honestly, it shouts “unprofessional.”  Would you give out business cards that you printed on your desktop printer?  Uh-uh.

There are some more important reasons to go for a custom email address.

Branding

Having a professional email is part of your brand.  Even if you don’t have your website yet, it indicates you are serious about your business and you plan to grow. And there are some hosting services that offer simple templates and hosting for under $100 a year where you can park your domain with information about your company so you have a simple presence on the Internet until you are ready to build your custom website.

Trust

A generic email detracts from your credibility on a subconscious level.  Consumers don’t trust you.  GoDaddy polled 1,000 U.S. small business ecommerce customers about what makes them trust businesses on the web. Business email ranked fourth among 10 big trust factors — from securing an ecommerce site with an SSL to maintaining active social media profiles.

Junk Filters

Your custom email is far less likely to get caught in spam filters.  Why risk the chance of your messages winding up in the junk mail boxes of your recipients’ mail folders?

Spam

Free emails are a spammer’s favorite snack. How many times have you seen your friends’ and colleagues’ AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail accounts been “spoofed,” or forged?  It’s using a real person’s email to send spam.  You don’t want your clients getting offers of free vacations or sex enhancing toys!

Control

If you have more than one person working for you and that person leaves, you have no control over their communications. Let’s say Mary is helping you with sales.  Her email is Mary@domain.com. After working for you a year she has a pretty good book of business and decides to go elsewhere.  Guess what?  Her customers have her personal email and they are going to order from her at her new place of business, not from your company.   Ouch!!

Invest today in a professional email service.  Don’t wait for later; You can’t have a “think small, I’ll tweak it when I get big mentality”   Think big, act big today.

Call Nancy at Snap Creative Group for help in your branding, including selecting the best domain name for your business.