Does Your Email Address Deliver a Clear Message?
Successful brands foster confidence; whether the company behind the professional identity happens to be operated by multiple home-based workers or based in a flashy city office, a strong brand strategy speaks volumes.
Your domain name and email address strategy should play a part in establishing your brand. Great brands are consistent throughout all communications, from vehicle graphics, business cards and websites. Your email address is an important touchpoint for all your online conversations and as such should propel your identity in a positive light.
So what is a branded email address? If you have not previously owned a domain name or worked for a company who had provided you with an email address you may have only ever used free email services supplied by the likes of Yahoo, MSN or Gmail. In short, a branded email address uses your website domain name, for example; [email protected].
With so much commerce now depending on email and the clear marketing wins possible with a professional email address, I have put together a few helpful strategies which will help you to present a positive image.
Branded email strategies
Your company name; when people ask for your email address do you feel confident? If you have to explain that your company email address ends in a different domain name than your website, you have just opened up a world of doubt. Especially true if you are using a free email service.
Would you walk into a corporate boardroom wearing your favourite Bermuda shorts? You may love wearing Bermuda shorts, but you have just entered the business environment where reputations and successes are formed on trust and confidence, so everything you do needs to set the correct tone.
The use of a free non-branded email address is also a lost opportunity to remind people about your website and company name.
Keeping it simple; most free email addresses are complicated, typically include some random number and make little sense. I frequently feel sorry when I hear checkout staff ask if a customer would like for their receipt to be emailed to them.
In business, emails can often make or break your day. Imagine losing a lucrative contract you’ve been working so hard to win just because someone miss types your email address. Your email is an essential communication tool within the operation of your business as such should be super easy to remember.
As your team grows; you need to have a strategy to ensure that you don’t end up with an odd collection of personalised addresses. When you have multiple people in your team, branded email addresses make it easy for new contacts to email related colleagues. It can be as easy as telling someone to email Neil and Dave at company domain name .com.
There are two popular approaches here, depending on the scale of your business, you can either use [firstname].[surename]@[website domain].[extension] or [firstname]@[website domain].[extension].
It is best to consider how you wish to form your email addresses early as updating emails later and informing all your contacts can become involved if done retrospectively
Own your emails; if you use a free email address you don’t truly own your email communications. What happens if the service goes offline, changes the policy of service. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t continue to use your favourite email app as many of these services can be configured to use your personalised domain branded email address.
Listed below are links to how-to-guides providing instructions for setting up personalised branded email addresses for some most popular services;
If you would like support in establishing your website or need assistance in developing a successful branded email strategy, contact me today to discuss how we can optimise your online communications.
