Why a business email address is important to customers
Setting up a business or working for yourself is a big deal. It takes guts, energy and raw belief because its not easy!
You go through a number of steps to make sure you have all the bases covered:
- A base of operations
- A strong business name
- A Business Plan
- Branding and logo design
- A website and
- An email address
These are just a few of the many things you have gone through to perfect your business and the last thing you want to do is lose customers to competitors simply because you didn’t setup a “business” email address.
However, many seem to repeatedly fall foul to a couple of very important things:
- Failing to setup a website (and associated online assets, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc)
- Failing to use a business email address
** I’m still baffled and amazed by the number of businesses (and self employed) that still do not have a website to represent them online and fail to use a business email address.
Uncovering the importance of a business email address.
It would appear to be common sense to have a business email address, a no-brainer you might say (well maybe I’m biased being a tech person).
However it is surprising to still see a large number of businesses using a personal or Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and other email address.
This is a major flaw and common mistake made by a surprising number of businesses. Many businesses are simply letting themselves down after all the time and effort made to perfect their business.
I’m sure you have all seen the Barclays advert “How to make sure your email address is loved by employers” as part of the Barclays Life Skills program.
The advert mentions 7 email address employers would hate to see, highlighting the following:
- Your email address is one of the ways that you come across to prospective employers.
- Don’t let your email address be something childish – just stick to your name with no catchphrases.
The thing is,
“just because it is business doesn’t mean the same doesn’t apply!”
- Your email address is one of the ways that you come across to potential customers, clients or partners.
- Don’t let your email address be something unprofessional – use a proper business email address i.e. yourname@yourbusinesswebsite.co.uk.
- Maybe you don’t know how to setup a business email?
- think it is expensive to do?
- don’t know any better? or
- simply don’t think it is important? – it’s about the business and service after all, right?
It definitely is all about the business and service but why go to great lengths perfecting it and lose out simply because you don’t realize the negative image you are projecting to potential customers.
The 5 main reasons for why you should use a Business Email Address are:
- Customer Perception – you will look professional and respected as a serious business.
- Trust and Credibility – scammers exist and is a big concern for customers. If you use a personal email address you will very likely be put into the same box (consciously or subconsciously).
- Increase and Promote your Brand – every time you send out an email you will promote your business as its in the email address.
- Emails are less likely to go into spam – you don’t want to lose leads simply because they didn’t see the email.
- You could miss out on your business email address – if you use an “unbranded” email address by the time you get to using it someone else might have taken it. PLUS you could be sending your customers straight to a competitor!
There is a lot of literature out there with this particular stance although I can accept that I may have bias towards this particular conclusion.
Realizing this particular bias, I decided to pose a question to my circle, network and business groups to see if it had any grounding.
The business email address question
Hi everyone I need your help for work. I would really appreciate it if you could help me out by commenting a), b) or c).
Which dental practice would you choose to contact given the following email addresses:
- a) info@pearlywhites.com
- b) pearlywhites@gmail.com
- c) no preference
NOTE: This was by no means a scientific experiment so please take it at face value (feel free to refer to other resources to make up your own conclusions).
The email address seen above are also fictitious and do not relate to any existing email accounts. Any similarity is purely by coincidence only.
This same question was put to people on:-
- My personal Facebook page
- A Facebook business group
- A local Facebook social/business group
The business email address question – The Results
Personal Facebook page
100% of all respondents selected option a) info@pearlywhites.com.
Facebook Business Group Page
100% of all respondents selected option a) info@pearlywhites.com.
Facebook Local Business Group page
100% of all respondents selected option a) info@pearlywhites.com.
A unanimous result all in favour of the business email address
As you can see, the results are unanimous with all respondents choosing option A – info@pearlywhites.com.
So why was that? Well some respondents provided further insight as they also volunteered reasons for why they had made their particular choice:
As you can see from the comments above being “professional” is the main reason for why they would choose the business email.
I would advise (and continue to) that you take this seriously and look into getting a business email address setup but you will need a website to secure such an email address.
If you need help with this please feel free to get in touch and we will be happy to help. Getting online is not as expensive as you might think and with a little technical know how you can also setup your very own email address or get this included within you website setup.
Thank you for reading.