The quickest way to come across as unprofessional?
Stick with that Gmail address for business emails. Seriously, every single time you reach out to a client, colleague, or prospect from yourname123@gmail.com or cooldude@yahoo.com, you’re telling them that you don’t take your business seriously. And that you’re a huge liar.
Your email address is your calling card. The first thing people see when you email them. If your email address doesn’t match your brand, or look professional, they’re not going to trust you.
There’s an easy fix for this though. It literally takes two minutes to sort.
Contents
- 1 In This Guide:
- 2 Personalised Email Addresses for Your Business Are Important
- 3 Professional Email Addresses Help Build Trust
- 4 Professional Email Addresses Build Brand Consistency
- 5 Picking The Best Solution For Your Business
- 6 Best Practices for Getting Professional Emails
- 7 Taking Your Email To The Next Level
- 8 Wrapping Up
In This Guide:
- Importance of personalised email addresses for businesses
- Credibility and trust with custom domain emails
- How to pick the right solution
- Building brand consistency
- Common mistakes to avoid
Personalised Email Addresses for Your Business Are Important
Running a business with a non-branded email address is missing an easy opportunity to grow your revenue.
I mean, c’mon, when a business emails you, do you think of them as more or less legitimate? An email from john@smithconsulting.com versus johnsmith456@gmail.com. Honestly.
Grab a personalised email address, here’s a good place to start, that matches your business domain, and you’re immediately signalling to clients and partners:
- You’re serious about your business
- You’re a real, professional business, and not just a hobby
- You’re not going anywhere
- You care about the details
And guess what? There’s actually some data to back this up.
A recent survey revealed that 75% of consumers judge a business website’s credibility based on a domain-based email address that matches the website. A full three quarters of potential customers are judging your business credibility based on your email address.
Powerful stuff right there.
Professional Email Addresses Help Build Trust
If there’s one thing that not many people realise…
It’s that your email address is doing way more work for your business than just delivering messages back and forth.
In fact, your email address is helping to build (or break) trust with potential customers with every single message.
A custom email domain is sending the following messages to people:
- You’re a serious, established business, not a part-time side hustle
- You’re invested in your business, by having professional infrastructure in place
- You take your brand identity seriously
- You’re not going anywhere.
Want more proof?
In the same survey quoted earlier, a whopping 94% of respondents reported having a greater sense of trust and trustworthiness with companies that use custom domain email addresses. That’s not just looking good. That’s making sales.
When you’re a potential customer, trust is the single most important factor for doing business with a brand.
If you have a non-professional email address, your emails have a much lower chance of being opened, responded to, turned into a sale, or recommended to friends. Why? Because people instinctively distrust what you have to offer when they see an unprofessional email address.
They may not know WHY they’re not trusting you, but your email address is a subtle red flag to your audience. Don’t give them that out.
Professional Email Addresses Build Brand Consistency
Something that most people don’t realise about personalised email addresses? Brand consistency.
Every time you send an email, you’re sending out a tiny advertisement for your business. When the email address, your website URL, your business cards, and your marketing materials all match, you’re strengthening your brand identity over and over again.
Look at most of the big brand businesses you know. All of them use custom email domains. Why? Because consistency builds recognition, and recognition builds trust.
Here are a few ways to nail down this consistency with your email address:
Keep it simple. Your email should be easy to remember and spell. john@yourcompany.com is great. john.alexander.smithson@yourcompanyinc.com is the opposite of great.
Match your website. If your website is acmeconsulting.com, your email should be @acmeconsulting.com. No need to overcomplicate things.
Stick with professional formats. firstname@domain.com or info@domain.com is professional. nickname123@domain.com is not. And trust me, no one is impressed with your clever use of numbers or random symbols.
The idea is to be so consistent that when people see your email address, they immediately associate it with your brand.
Picking The Best Solution For Your Business
A lot of people jump into getting customised email addresses for business, but it’s not always as simple as it looks.
In order to get the perfect set of personalised emails for your business, there are a few important things to consider:
Reliability: Emails not getting delivered to inboxes is the absolute worst. Make sure you choose an email hosting service that ensures high deliverability.
Security: Emails often carry sensitive information that you need to protect, such as personal details and business secrets. Look for encryption, spam filters, and backup solutions.
Scalability: As your business grows, you’ll need more email accounts. Make sure your email solution can scale easily.
Support: When issues arise (and they will), you need to get support quickly. Look for providers with strong customer service.
But here’s the thing that people often overlook…
The best email solution for your business is not always the cheapest one. Saving a few dollars can end up costing you much more in lost emails, security breaches, and lost time.
Best Practices for Getting Professional Emails
Personalised email addresses for business aren’t rocket science, but there are some common mistakes I see people making ALL the time:
Using Numbers in Your Address: firstname123@yourbusiness.com looks amateur. If the first one you want is taken, get creative with the domain instead.
Making It Too Complicated: If it’s hard for someone to remember your email after seeing it once, it’s too difficult.
Mixing Personal and Business: Seriously, don’t use your business email for personal things (or personal for business). They’re for different purposes.
Ignoring Your Mobile Email Experience: Make sure your email service works well on phones. A lot of people check email on their mobile devices these days.
Missing an Email Signature: A simple email signature with your name, title, and contact info can make each email you send look more professional.
To wrap this one up, a great email address should only make you look better, not give people a reason to look away.
Taking Your Email To The Next Level
Ok. So now you’ve got your personalised email addresses all set up. Good job!
But you can do even more with that professional email to really level up your business.
Here are some ways to squeeze even more value out of a professional email:
Set up department emails. Use separate addresses for support@, sales@, or info@ to make your business look larger and more organised.
Forward emails smartly. Route different business emails to the right people automatically with forwarding rules.
Email marketing. Emails with professional domains have much better deliverability than the big email providers. That means your marketing emails have a much higher chance of actually reaching inboxes.
Monitor your email reputation. Keep an eye on your domain’s email reputation to ensure your deliverability is consistent over time.
The bottom line is that there’s so much more that you can do with a professional email, but most businesses never even scratch the surface of what’s possible.
Wrapping Up
Personalised email addresses for business are no longer a luxury. They are now an essential component of a modern professional image that helps you build trust, appear legitimate, and grow your business in a competitive environment.
It’s a tiny investment of both money and time compared to the credibility and trust you’ll gain from having personalised email addresses that match your domain name. Setting up all of your new business email accounts typically takes less than an hour end-to-end.
If you’re still using a free provider email, then you’re telling your potential clients that you’re not a real business, you don’t care, and that you’re a liar.
Don’t be that person. Go get a professional email address that matches your domain name and start building trust with your potential customers.
Don’t make them give you a reason not to trust you.
