Small Business Email Addresses

There is one thing that I see time and time again amongst small business owners that really frustrates me from a marketing point of view. Small businesses often have a website but often don’t use the email functionality that comes with having a domain name, and still rely on giving out a hotmail or a gmail email address as their business email, which looks so unprofessional.

It is so cost effective nowadays to buy a domain and set up an email address on that domain that I don’t know why people don’t do it. Actually, I think I do know why small business owners don’t get business email addresses, and that’s because they either don’t know how to, think it’s going to cost too much, or once they have signed up for it they don’t know how to get the messages into their Outlook or Outlook Express account or access them online. So, they continue using the personal email address that they use for everything else, or they set up a hotmail account with their business name at the front and think that will do, and it won’t in my opinion.

When you buy a domain you can usually get an email address setup and forwarded to your personal email as part of your purchase. This isn’t ideal as any replies you send still have your personal email address on them, but at least you can give out a professional sounding business email in the first place. Other than that for a small cost you can get email functionality with your domain that allows you access to your email online or through your email software, like Outlook, even if you don’t want to purchase hosting for a website (although you should do that anyway; have you seen the statistics of how may people are buying offline following searching online?). These companies offer instructions on how to set your email up in Outlook, or you could look on YouTube – there are lots of instructional videos on there.

So, when you buy a domain and/or arrange hosting for a website, don’t forget to check out the email options and ensure that you are presenting a professional image to your prospects and customers.

Recommended Resources (UK Based)
www.123-reg.co.uk
www.ukreg.com

Image courtesy of Nexodyne