One of the very best tools to have emerged when the Internet was born was email. Allowing people to communicate easily and quickly across all borders, email rapidly became one of the biggest and most popular communication tools in the world and was embraced by individuals and businesses alike. Indeed, forward thinking business owners at the time saw email as an excellent, low-cost way to communicate with customers and jumped on the bandwagon right from the start.
An unbranded email address also does absolutely nothing to distinguish a business’s product or service in a customer’s consciousness
Today it is practically impossible to find a business that doesn’t have an email address that their customers can use to communicate with them. There is an interesting phenomenon happening today however in that many new businesses today do not purchase their own domain name but instead use a free email service that is provided by one of the bigger online media companies like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.
This doesn’t affect the ability for customers to communicate with them at all but really isn’t a great idea, business-wise. The problem is simply that an unbranded email address also does absolutely nothing to distinguish a business’s product or service in a customer’s consciousness. It also makes their email address more difficult to remember and, to many prospective customers, may appear ‘cheap’. If your business email address ends in @hotmail.com, @gmail.com or (heaven forbid) @aol.com it simply won’t do anything for your business at all, surely a definite waste of an excellent marketing tool.
When choosing the domain name that you’re going to use you should try as best as you can to use the exact name of your business. If you are an independent contractor and you don’t have a business name you can just use your own name. If the name of your business is much too long to use as your domain name you should cut it down to an abbreviation that will be obvious to your potential customers. For example, if your business name is Essex County Garden Maintenance you could use a domain name like EssexGardening.co.uk. This will not only brand your business but is also easy to remember and can be easily used by anyone in your organisation. ([email protected], for example.)
In the end it just makes good business sense to have a professional, branded email address for your business. It will help you to brand your product or service, it will be easier for your customers to remember and it just looks more professional. If you’re just getting started in business and trying desperately to stay on budget we understand that you might be slightly hesitant to pay for a domain in order to get a branded email address. Keeping costs down as you get your business going is an excellent idea.
That being said, as soon as you can afford it, purchasing a domain and branding your company with your own professional email address is an excellent idea also. The benefits that you will get from registering your own domain and getting a branded email address are definitely more than worth the small investment cost and, in the long run, could be very beneficial to your bottom line.
We’re Markadept and we help business owners find solutions to their online marketing difficulties. If you have any questions or are looking for some advice about how to bolster your online presence, please give us a call on 0330 321 0445 or drop us an email; [email protected] and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
