In this day and age, most people prefer emailing over having a phone conversation. Which makes it virtually impossible to do business without an email address. Although the thought of using a free email service might be appealing, there are so many reasons why it’s important to invest in a professional email address. Here’s why:
Credibility and Trust
The most important thing in a business is having a trustworthy image. When people are willing to spend their hard-earned money on your service or product, it means they have complete faith that they made the right decision by choosing you over the competition. Routing your emails through your business’s domain name shows that you are well-established, legitimate and professional. People are probably more willing to get their haircut by lily@inspirationhairdesign.com than lily2001@hotmail.com.
Fun fact: Mobile device users open more than half of their emails when they come from a corporate email address. – Campaign Monitor
Reduce the Chances of Being Flagged as Spam
Spammers are not very trustworthy people, and you guessed it, they often use free email addresses. Which means that spam filters are much more aggressive when it comes to free accounts. It would be a shame to spend all this time writing emails, or newsletters only to have them land in Junk Mail.
A professional email address reduces the risk of this happening significantly. Why? Because they have a better reputation in the eyes of spam filters. Chances are you will see an increase in delivery rates when using a professional email address.
Branding
Branding is not just for large corporations, it’s important for small businesses as well. Having a professional email address is a big part of maintaining a unified image. But branding is more than just an image. It’s your reputation, how people perceive you. It’s how they feel about your products or services, and your customer service team.
In addition, by having a professional email address, users will be able to easily associate your email address with your company and easily find your website if they want more information about your products and services.
Email Spoofing
Yes “spoofing” is a real word, and it actually happens. It’s when someone is able to use a forged version of someone else’s email address to send spam. That’s why AOL has paved the way with the most aggressive set of rules yet. When using an AOL email address as your sender address, emails sent from a third party won’t even reach their destination. It’s the same thing if you use a Yahoo email address. And who knows when companies like Gmail and Outlook.com will follow in AOL’s and Yahoo’s footsteps.
When they all decide to crack down on spoofing one by one, so many emails will remain stuck in cyberspace, and that’s never good news for a legitimate sender. Using a professional email address will prevent you from going through this.
Fun fact: Having your own domain protects you from spoofing if you activate the following authentication methods; SPF, DKIM or DMARC and it will improve the delivery rate of your emails. Moreover, Cyberimpact can allow you to send emails while respecting your DMARC policy. Contact us to know how to do it.
Get Organized
A hosted email address makes using any calendar software (Outlook or other) a breeze. Getting organized helps create a healthy work environment. Your colleagues will thank you for it.
Keeping track of all your communications with a generic email address can quickly become confusing, especially if you have a personal Gmail account and a business Gmail account. Customer emails can get mixed up between your personal and company emails and you won’t be able to find a particular message.
Private Life
When you use a free email service, such as those offered by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, you must accept a user agreement that limits the confidentiality of your emails. However, if you choose a professional email address with a trusted hosting company, they must guarantee full confidentiality and security for your professional emails.
Would you rather have all your email data on a server over which you have no control or on a server that ensures the security of your data?
Portability
If you have decided to set up your free business email account with Gmail, for example, and you want to switch to Outlook, you will have no choice but to change your email address and inform your clients. However, many of them may not see your email change announcement.
On the other hand, when you have a professional domain email address, you avoid this problem. Indeed, your email address belongs to you since you are the owner of your domain name. You are therefore free to change your web hosting provider whenever you want, without having to inform your customers.
Take Action by Choosing a Professional Email Address
Contact your current website host to see if it is possible to have your own business email address. If not, there are plenty of hosting providers such as Microsoft 365, GoDaddy, Google Workspace, and many more!