In our latest YouTube video, we discuss why it is important for you to invest in a customized business email rather than using a free email service such as Gmail or Yahoo. You may ask what difference it makes? Consider the following – you receive an email from ‘example@yahoo.com’ with a business proposal. How do you know that this person runs a legitimate business? There is no way for you to check since free email servers can host anyone and everyone. Now consider whether you receive the same business proposal from ‘example@theirbusinessname.com.’ This comes across as much more professional, personalized and credible.
Many small business owners tend to take the seemingly cheaper route, and use their personal email address via a free hosting service for their business purposes. In doing so, they tend to make the common misconception in assuming that acquiring and setting up a customized business account is prohibitively expensive. There may be some costs incurred for the initial setup and monthly hosting, but there are many more benefits to making this investment than they realize.
If you have already started using a personal, free email address for your business remember that you can easily forward emails from this account to your new business account without having to broadcast the change and avoiding any lost communications. Consider this – you are working for yourself, and not Google or Yahoo. Why would you promote their business for free?
Let’s talk about what to consider when investing in a registered business email account. Choosing your business name is important, as is the naming of individual email addresses within your organization. It is important to be consistent with naming – and avoid using first names alone as this also adds to your credibility and professionalism. A good example is to use initials and surnames, or full names e.g. initial.lastname@yourbusinessname.com, or firstname.lastname@yourbusinessname.com. This also helps eliminate confusion when you have multiple employees with similar or identical first names.
Where can you host your business email account? There are a number of options that are free that usually come with your web hosting package (POP and IMAP), but we would recommend paying a small monthly fee per mailbox per month for a fully synchronized mail server service such as G-Suite and Microsoft 365 which offer reliable, safe email hosting, and plenty of additional features to assist you even further with collaborating with staff and clients/suppliers.
Knowing the difference between a POP and an IMAP account will help you better manage your emails – in a POP (post office protocol) setup the files are downloaded individually per device, meaning you will have multiple sent items and Inboxes that do not speak to each other which can become frustrating. In an IMAP (internet message access protocol) all your files are received and saved on your internet service provider’s server, meaning that once you have read the email on your phone, it shows as ‘read’ on all your other devices and vice versa. This is a more user-friendly option than POP for business email accounts, but still considered ‘old school’ because calendar and contacts items still do not synchronize. We highly recommend one of the more robust fully hosted and synchronized e-mail platforms mentioned above.
You can also easily set up multiple email addresses without having to pay extra per user – there are many variables nowadays that make this possible. You can have the same mailbox but different usernames or aliases that all direct to the same place. This makes your email management easier and is also helpful when there are transitions within your company so that mails don’t get lost if there is staff turnover. You can also have ‘shared’ mailboxes which are free, where multiple people have access to a mailbox attached to a licensed account.
We would love to hear from you – drop us a line and let us know why you agree or disagree with the need for a registered business email account!
