When you’re first starting up your business and money is tight, you may opt to use a free email address like MyBusinessName@gmail.com or MyBusinessPembs@hotmail.com.
These are fine to get you on your feet, but as you expand you’ll want to get a proper business email address. If you’ve already got your own website, or are setting up one, it’s usually very easy to add a domain-based business email address.
What is a business email address?
A business email address is an email address which ends in a domain name of your choice. A domain name is the name which you give your website so people can find it. For example, our domain name is modernprint.co.uk. Domain names aren’t bought , they’re actually rented – you need to pay for the right to use them every 12 months.
Once you’ve got a domain name, you have the power to create your own email addresses which end in that domain name. You can choose anything you like before the @ sign – if you owned mybusiness.co.uk, you could have info@mybusiness.co.uk, or perhaps a name like joe.bloggs@mybusiness.co.uk.
Why should I use a business email address?
“But why should I pay for it?” you might say. It’s important that you use a domain-based email instead of a free one for a few reasons :-
- Customer Trust
- Due to the massive number of spam emails delivered , people are quite distrusting when they receive an email from an address they don’t know. Especially if it comes from a service which can set up new addresses in under a few minutes.
- Having an email arrive from a proper domain-based email is much more trustworthy. They cannot be easily set up and it identifies you as a part to the same company. This is especially important if the customer has found you online.
- If the customer found you at mybusiness.co.uk, they will expect to see mybusiness.co.uk in your email correspondence. If you respond to their enquiry and it comes from a free address like businessname396@outlook.com, they might not think that it is genuine/legitimate at first glance.
- Security / Fraud Prevention
- Say that your free email, mybusiness@gmail.com is shown on your printing/website. There’s nothing stopping some criminal from registering another free email account, called mybusiness.accounts@gmail.com and approaching your customers requesting payment at the new address.
- With business email, your customers know that the message definitely came from you as it ends in your business’ domain name.
- If you have a business email, no-one else can create email addresses at your domain name – if they try to fake it, it’s automatically marked as “untrustworthy” and sent straight to spam.
- True control over your emails
- You do not technically own the email address you register through Google’s Gmail or Microsoft Outlook and they could choose to terminate your account at any time. If you control it, you know exactly what is going on with the service and where your emails are stored. More importantly you control all of your your email data, so you can move it wherever you like.
If you want help with purchasing a domain name and setting up your own business email address get in touch with us today by calling 01646 682676. Alternatively you can send us a message at this link.
Get A Free Starter Website with Business Email
Modern Print & Design are giving away one-page starter websites (with business email) to businesses with no web presence! Please call 01646 682676 today to find out more! Your free starter website will feature; one website domain name, your business’ colour scheme, your logo, an email enquiry form, a photo slideshow/gallery and a social media(Facebook/Instagram) feed connected to the website.
