How a Professional Email Address Can Help You Build Trust

When you are starting a business, you have much to do to get your company up and running. One task that is sometimes overlooked is setting up a professional email address. It is often tempting for new business owners to use a free or personal email account to save money, but we do not recommend this as the best solution. An email address that includes your company’s name helps boost your professional image, which makes your brand feel more established, identifiable, and credible.

When you are building a relationship with a new client, customer, or business partner, it is vital to create a sense of trust through personalized and thoughtful communication. To accomplish this via email specifically, you first need a professional email address. This is the “From” and/or “Reply to” address that a recipient sees when you send them a response to their question, information about your products or services, or updates in your newsletter.

Another reason why you should use a professional email address rather than your personal email address as the business owner is that your email is connected to all parts of your business marketing including your business card, website, direct mail, and social media channels.

What is a branded email address?

A branded email address has your business name or website in the email address. An example of a fictitious branded email address is alexsmith@alexandsons.com for the fictitious company Alex and Sons.

An email address like this example conveys a message of trust to someone who visits your website, and helps you build brand recognition. Often, people will take the web address from the back end of your email address and paste it into their browser to learn more about your company.

Benefits of Professional Email Addresses

There are many benefits of using a branded email address. By creating a professional email address for your business, you improve your company’s perceived reputation and legitimize your brand.

The benefits of having a professional email address include:

1. You gain instant credibility with customers.

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you see a business with a free email account? Be honest. If you are like most people, you may think the business is not legitimate or trustworthy. You may wonder, how secure is their business if they are not willing or are unable to pay a few dollars a month for a professional email account?

Credibility is an important, invisible currency in the business world. If your business seems suspicious, customers will not buy your products or services. You will also fail to look like a serious business when you contact media companies and other businesses. A professional email address with your domain name makes you look more dependable.

Anyone can create a free email address on Gmail or Yahoo, which can come with serious risks to you and your business. How can your customers be sure that you or your company is the one who is contacting them when the emails are coming from, for example, a Gmail or Yahoo email account?

Did You Know?

An unbranded email address is any free email address from websites such as Yahoo and Google.

When you invest in a business email address that ends with your own domain, you show your customers you have spent the time and money to build your business. This contributes to social proof around your brand and products/services.

2. Your business will appear professional, and your brand will shine.

As you may have already guessed, a professional business email is designed to make you appear more professional. First, the person you contact is less likely to ignore your email, as your email shows you mean business. Second, your email will even look professional to spam filters, so your emails are not as likely to be marked as suspicious or booted to the spam folder.

When your email looks good, your business does, too. Let’s face it: A free email account devalues your brand. It is much harder to send out customized emails that reflect your brand using a free email address.

Branding helps your email stand out. It also shows that you care about your company’s image and how others view it. The more customers recognize your emails, the more familiar they will be with the business. This awareness can lead them to trust your brand and spend more money on your products over time.

Email exploded on the scene in the 1990s. As a result, billions of email addresses already exist. It is highly likely that your business name will not be available if you try to use a free email account, which means you will have to create one that includes your business name plus extra characters and numbers. The result is an unprofessional email address that doesn’t reflect your brand. If you invest in your own domain and email address, you will be able to use the name you really want.

3. Your brand will be consistent, and you and your staff members become brand ambassadors.

Creating custom email addresses will ensure your online presence is consistent and easy to find. Plus, all your employees and departments can have matching emails that include your company name. Consistent branding makes it much easier for your customers to ensure they are contacting the right individuals or teams. It also improves internal communication among your team members.

Do you plan on hiring people as part of your team? Do you currently have employees in different departments? Free email accounts are normally limited to one user per email account. When your business has a branded email address, you can create and manage unlimited email accounts with ease.

This means you can create an email account using each employee’s name or their role in the company. Extra perks include auto-responders, mail forwarding, email aliases and mailing lists. With your own domain, you can unlock all the opportunities email marketing has to offer your business, as you’ll be able to customize a brand-friendly sender address.

4. You will improve your email security and reduce the risk of your emails going to the spam folder.

When you use a custom email domain, you have complete control over who can use your accounts. You can easily add and delete users as your team changes.

Did you know that some businesses block emails from free email accounts? While you may save money with a free account, it could cost your business untold amounts of money in lost sales. Emails are also less likely to get marked as spam if you make a good first impression with your welcome email. 

For example, you are pursuing an important lead using your free email address. You send multiple emails but do not receive any response. Little did you know, your emails had been flagged as spam and your lead never received them. By the time you follow up, it is too late and that contact has decided to work with a competitor.

Make Your Online Brand Count

Having a professional business email address is an important step in building a trustworthy brand. With a custom and professional email address, you will be taken more seriously by prospects, customers, and email providers (i.e., the likelihood of your emails being sent directly into “Spam” or “Junk” folders decreases).

Digital Netword is here to help with establishing your professional business email, so reach out to us today!