When was the last time you received a customer email that made you go, ‘hmm’?
At Cadence, our spam filters fend off a lot of suspicious communication, but every now and then we still receive dubious queries. They invariably reach us from gmail.com, hotmail.com or yahoo.com accounts, sent by people who once summoned all their wit to register as “italoqueen84” or “smilystarfish”.
Legitimate senders? Some are. Professional? Anything but.
Emails are your first impression. Make them count.
In the age of electronic communication, emails remain the preferred medium for doing business, and the most important one. Forget paper business cards. Today, people make a first impression via email.
Freemail accounts are cheap and practical. But various surveys confirm that they don’t strike a serious tone in the business world – even with a simple ‘firstname.lastname’ combination in your email address.
Using a personal email, rather than a professional one, may hamper sales and deter customers. For example, 75% of Americans think having a domain-based email that matches your website is a very important factor when it comes to trusting an online small business, according to a survey by technology provider GoDaddy. One-third doubt the trustworthiness and legitimacy of a seller who uses a personal email address, while 23% would be hesitant to share their credit card details.
Ireland’s national domain registry IEDR found 66% of Irish internet users place more trust in businesses that use a customised email address than those which use Gmail or another free mail option.
No need to give up Gmail. Just add the look of the pros.
Customers expect professionalism. And small businesses, especially when they are still building their reputation, are better off hiding their personal email addresses when they’re serious about their trade. Registering a professional email address that matches your website’s domain name is inexpensive and easy, but it can instantly boost your legitimacy.
It’s also a myth that owning several email addresses becomes unwieldy or that you might lose saved contacts when moving from an old email to a new one. Business owners can keep the personal email they’ve used for years and their new, domain-specific address.
Forwarding your free personal email to your professional account takes no longer than a few simple commands, and our tech developers at Cadence are swift at handling such tasks (and more).