5 Reasons Why You Need a Custom Email Address
Branding is probably the most important step when it comes to promoting your business. After all, you need to have a name to tell others who you are.
But as you take your business online, other than creating a website and obtaining your domain name, there is one more thing that is equally as important—a custom business email business.
Let’s begin with a simple example.
Imagine you are planning to purchase a new car and are choosing between two car dealers. You go to Company A’s website and see the following email address [email protected]. While Company B’s email is [email protected]. Which one would you choose?
If I were the customer, I would probably opt for Company B because it just looks a bit more reliable. A company with a Gmail email, I don’t even know if this is legit, could it be a scam email address?
Credibility is key here, and a custom email address will help. Here are a few more reasons why you should use a custom email.
Why is Having Custom Email Addresses Important For Your Business?
Credibility & Trust
Trust is essential. It is hard to learn, but extremely easy to lose. You think it is fine to send out emails to your customers using [email protected] because you know this is coming from you, this email is real. But that doesn’t mean your customers feel the same.
Globally, on average, 122.33 billion spam emails are being sent every day. While scams and frauds only make up 2.5% of all spam emails, 73% of these emails were designed for identity theft.
Cybercriminals are constantly looking for opportunities to steal people’s personal information. For instance, the Omicron scam emails targeting U.K. and U.S. residents as the COVID-19 new variant start sweeping across the world.
If some cybercriminals decided to create a free email address that is extremely similar to yours, there is a high possibility your potential customers would fall prey to these scams. You risk losing not only one, but possibly a group of users.
You are already paying for this feature
Depending on your service provider, both hosting service or website building providers, most of their plans might already come with the ability to create a customized business email address.
For instance, Website.com starts offering this feature once users opt for Elite and above website plans. If your website plan offers this, why not also create a custom business email address for your business? It’s not like you’ll have to pay more to set it up.
Standardize all your company email addresses
If you have a custom email address, you can easily use it and format all the email addresses that you need to set up for in the future. This is extremely helpful if you want to set up different generic emails (info@, contact@, career@, etc.), or when you start to expand your team. You are not at the mercy of if any usernames are still available.
You keep control of all the company email accounts
Not everyone stays in the same company forever. Some leave after a year, some five years, some might stay for over 20 years. But the point is, people will leave your company one day.
Using the custom domain email service allows you to add and remove email accounts. When someone leaves the company, he or she won’t be able to bring along the email address with them. You maintain ownership of any company data and records of specific mailboxes, also avoiding any risks that might arise in case the person didn’t leave on good terms.
@Gmail, @Yahoo, @Outlook scream unprofessional
Whenever you send someone an email using your business email address, you are also marketing yourself and the business you are representing.
As a customer, you are probably planning to spend some money with a company. Ask yourself, which one do you feel more confident to contact?
[email protected] OR [email protected]
You can argue that free email service producers provide good enough service and free email addresses should not affect your credibility. Your business has a legit official website, positive reviews and testimonials, and an active online presence (e.g. social media).
While that may be true, the reality is, it could affect your potential customers at a subconscious level. Particularly when the vast majority of eCommerce stores use custom email addresses.
This single factor may make people wonder if you are really serious about your business.
First impression is everything. It determines whether customers want to do business with you. Just like your website, treat your email address like your business card. If you take your business seriously, you should set up a custom email address.
Thinking about creating a website? Try out Website.com’s website builder. It is simple to use, you can very quickly set up a website and get it running. No coding knowledge is needed!
However, if you are looking for a more flexible and customizable option, consider WordPress. Just not that it would have a steeper learning curve, and you likely will do better if you have some understanding of coding languages.