Why You Should Have a Branded Business Email
When you first started dabbling in projects as a freelancer, you probably got along just fine using your personal email address. But when you’re a real-deal small business owner, things are different.
You are marketing your products and services using a highly branded website with a branded domain name as a hub for your brand messaging. Your email address ought to be a key piece in this branding puzzle, completing the picture.
So stop using yourname26@gmail.com for your business correspondence. Your brand deserves better. It’s time to move on to a branded business email and here’s why.
First impressions
You’re taking lots of care to make sure you make the right impression when prospects load your homepage as their first exposure to your brand. But not everyone comes to your website before they start emailing you. And when your email is sent from your domain name, it helps to convey the idea that you’re already established, professional and take your long-term branding seriously, which helps to build trust.
And the email address itself – even the bit before the “@” – is also important. Don’t use something faceless like photos@yourbrandname.com or inappropriately informal like twerkfan@yourbrandname.com. Go with some combination of variations on your first name, last name or initials.
Cohesive brand world
Since your website is essentially operating as your company’s primary digital branding hub, using branded emails adds weight to it.
People you correspond with might benefit from being reminded that your website exists and being reminded where to find it. Often, the easiest way for your satisfied customers to refer friends to you is to simply forward a recent email from you, so that your contact information appears in the friend’s inbox.
In these cases, the new prospect might have a harder time finding your website, if your email address is on a completely unrelated domain.
The more you can strengthen the way people associate your messages with your website, the better off your brand is. You can even drive this association home further by investing in a strong email signature that includes your logo and links to your website and your brand’s social channels.
Comfortable compartmentalisation
It isn’t easy to be all about the business all the time. Many web workers find that their productivity increases when they take regular breaks from activities that are strictly work-related throughout the day. So we’re not saying that you’re better off ignoring your personal life altogether while you’re on the clock. But it can be extremely helpful to keep distractions to a minimum, enabling you to keep your work and personal lives in tidy distinct compartments.
Keeping your personal email separate from your business email is extremely helpful to keep distractions to a minimum. When your recreational emails arrive in an altogether different inbox, you can focus on the business at hand as necessary.
Business email systems can also allow you to work with multiple addresses, as yourname@yourbrandname.com isn’t necessarily the best address to use for all cases, especially for publishing on web pages as a contact address. So, you can effectively compartmentalise your work day even further by setting up inboxes or aliases like support@yourbrandname.com, billing@yourbrandname.com, info@yourbrandname.com. This will help you to keep the action at yourname@yourbrandname.com focused on actual ongoing business operations, and you can set aside distinct work shifts for customer care, dealing with accounts receivable, turning around price quotes for prospects, etc.
Transitioning to your branded business email
If you’re currently using something like yourbrandname@gmail.com, then you should probably set that inbox to auto forward all messages to your new address. This way, older contacts who don’t quickly update their records will still be able to reach you.
Apprehensive about leaving behind your favourite email client? Nowadays, pretty much all the big players in the email space allow you to send and receive emails from any domain. So no major sacrifice there.
SOURCE: Wix
