What's The Best Business Email

Email is the main method of communication these days between businesses and their customers. Whether you’re responding to a question about your products and services or sending a copy of a payment receipt, it’s email that gets the information from point A to point B.

But your business email address is more than just a way to communicate, it’s also part of your branding and makes an impression on the person at the other end of that email message.

If you send a quote for accounting services from “numberlover10@gmail.com” it’s going to give a much different impression of your company than if it came from “jsmith@smithaccounting.com.”

Yet, many small businesses start out using email from a free service like gmail, yahoo, or AOL and end up just continuing to use it either because it’s what they’re familiar with or they aren’t sure how to switch over to business emails using a custom domain.

But that generic email address isn’t doing you any favors when it comes to your leads and customers.

33% of people doubt the trustworthiness of a company that uses a free generic email address for their business email.

When people see that your email is from a free service, they immediately wonder why you don’t have professional business email address that matches your website domain (i.e. wwww.mysite.com).

If you’re still hanging onto that free email service for your business email address, read on to find out why you should stop now and stitch to a custom email address.

Stop Using a Free Email Address for Your Company Email

Gmail, hotmail, AOL, yahoo, all of these are free email services, which is great for a cheap personal email option, but not so great for business use. While you may think it’s not having that big of an impact on your company, customer surveys show otherwise.

Here are several reasons to finally ditch that generic email account and upgrade to a domain-based email.

Stronger Customer Trust

When people are getting ready to give you their credit card for an order, they pause if you don’t have an email address that matches your website address. Many scammers use free email addresses, which makes a potential customer wonder.

A full 75% of U.S. ecommerce customers say that it’s important to have a business email that matches your website domain when it comes to trusting a business.

Easier to Add Additional Email Addresses

If you’re using something like timscleaning@gmail.com for your business email, what happens when you start adding on employees? Using a free email account makes it difficult to add additional email addresses for your company and have consistent-looking emails across your organization.

When using a domain-based email instead, like myname@timscleaning.com, you have complete freedom in how your employee emails will look and can easily scale up and add new emails as you grow.

It’s Easy to Do with Office 365

Many small business owners stick with a generic email simply because they don’t know how easy it could be to start using a domain-based email.

If you have a website domain already and use Office 365, you can easily set up custom emails based upon your domain in the platform and then use them with the Outlook email program.

This also gives you the ability to easily access your email from anywhere on mobile or desktop devices.

Domain Emails Are Very Inexpensive

If you’re worried about the cost of switching from free to custom domain emails, it’s very inexpensive. If you don’t already have a website domain, you can get one for about $12 a year.

You also have a few different options for hosting your emails including:

• OFFICE 365
• HOSTED OR ON-PREMISE EXCHANGE
• GOOGLE APPS
• WEBSITE HOSTING PROVIDER

Looks More Professional

An email address that matches your website domain looks much more professional than one from a free service like Gmail or Yahoo. And while customers may not say anything to you about it, they are judging your business by that email address.

It only takes 10 seconds for consumers to form an impression of a company. It can be when they land on a website or when they see your email address. Often the email address is one of the first pieces of branding a potential customer will see, and by using a custom domain email address, you’ll be making a much better first impression.

You Have More Control Over Email Security

If you have all your users using a free Gmail account for their business email, what happens if one of them leaves and you don’t have access to that Gmail account? You could end up losing valuable client contacts and emails with no way to retrieve them.

When you’re using domain-based custom emails, you can control where the emails are stored and ensure the email address and access to it stays with your company even after the employee leaves.

Get Help Powering Up to Domain-Based Business Email

Unsure of how to get started? Unbound Digital can walk you through the process of creating custom domain emails in Office 365 or another program so you can put a more professional face on your business email.

Contact Unbound Digital today for a free business email consultation. Call 423-335-2461 or reach us online.