5 Reasons Your New Business Needs a Professional Email Address

New year, new business? If that’s you and you’re ready to launch your new business, wait a minute: Are you sure you have the right kind of email address in place?

“The right kind of email address—what’s that?” you ask. Well, there’s a difference between personal email addresses and professional ones.

Personal email addresses are free and come from providers like Gmail or Microsoft. Your email address will include the provider’s domain—for example, [email protected]

A professional email address uses the domain name you’ve chosen for your business. Instead of your emails coming from [email protected], they’ll come from [email protected] (or whatever the domain name of your business is).

“As long as my customers can find me, why does my email address matter?” you say. Believe me—it does. Here are five reasons your new business should have a professional email address:

1. It builds trust. According to statistics from Verisign, 65 percent consider a company-branded email more credible than an email that comes from a personal address. No wonder, since spammers often use fraudulent personal email addresses to elude being caught.
2. It serves as a branding tool. When your email address includes your business domain name, every email you send is a mini-advertisement for your business. Repetition is key to building brand recognition—something a new business desperately needs—so the more ways you can remind people that your business exists, the better. (Plus, if you use a personal email address, your email signature is promoting another business, like [email protected])
3. It makes your small business look bigger. With a professional email address, you have the option to create multiple email addresses. This allows even a one-person startup to create the illusion of a larger business, which helps in landing customers. Directing sales inquiries to [email protected] or media inquiries to [email protected] creates the impression that you’re a thriving business with multiple departments, even if you’re the one answering all of the emails. It also provides consistency as your business grows: As you add employees, you can set up consistent email addresses like [email protected], [email protected], and so on.
4. It helps you get organized. With Web.com’s Business Email package, you’ll also get cloud storage for your business emails and files, plus the ability to manage your calendar, contacts and tasks across all of your devices. All this for a few dollars a month.
5. It protects your computer and network. Web.com’s Business Email helps reduce the amount of junk mail and spam you receive. This can help protect you—and your business—from damaging computer viruses and cyber criminals.

With all the reasons to have a professional email address, there’s really no excuse not to “go pro” and start sending business emails the professional way.

Photo by Corinne Kutz on Unsplash