Importance of Professional Email Addresses – Part 1 – Why your ‘free’ email will cost you

You’re a busy professional and you work hard to build a positive brand around the work you do. In fact, many of today’s legal, accounting, real estate and other professionals benefit from having a business that conveys trust by using Professional Email Addresses with their own domain name.

A lack of trust and perceived professionalism can directly translate to lost revenue.

There are lots of ways you’ve worked to build a positive brand and inspire trust with your clients. Pleasant phone greetings when a client calls in, a professional sign over the office entrance, even stationary on a nice paper stock are important to let your clients know that you’re serious about your business.  And understanding the importance of professional email addresses will help you build that trust even further.

What about having your own domain name for email?

How does it look after a great conversation with a potential customer when you hand them your business card and your email address you expect to have important business conversations with belongs to one of the big email providers offering free service?

Lets look at it in another way, imagine a lawyer with an email address of consultantpat@hotmail.com.  Do you think Pat’s clients would be comfortable knowing that private correspondence with their consultant was being transmitted through a free email service? How safe and secure do you think their information is when it’s sent it to a free email service?  How would their perception change if Pat’s email were pat@robinsonconsulting.com?

There are some serious things to consider when using your business email:

Who’s going to help you when you need it?

Delete an important email? Can’t log in to your account? Have a question about the number of emails you can send from your account? The free email service providers have self-service tools to help you figure out your problem on your own, but what can you do if those are no help and you still have a problem? Who will you talk to and how long will you have to wait for help?

Will your emails be delivered?

“I didn’t receive your email”.  Does this phrase sound familiar? Free email accounts are very popular with spammers. Did you know that some mail services started blocking mass mail delivery from domain names with free email account extensions?

The switching cost to a domain-based email address later is higher.

There’s a strong benefit to having people know where to find you. Don’t wait until it is too late and you have already lost a bunch of emails or private emails are sent to the wrong address and you end up with very unhappy clientele.

Unintended communication could be embarrassing, even damaging. Jon Smith is our hypothetical accountant with a free GMail account at jon.smith@gmail.com.  Can you guess the number of times his clients have emailed their sensitive financial documents (even tax returns) to john.smith@gmail.com? Even though they sent it to the wrong email address, that account exists and the wrong person is receiving their personal information; however at the time his client is unaware they sent it to the wrong email. Sure, it’s the client’s fault for the mistake, but could this have been prevented if he were Jon@ReliableAccountants.com?

If your business email is using your domain name and your clients send their information to the wrong account (John@ReliableAccountants.com instead of Jon@ReliableAccountants.com), that email address would not exist and they would receive a bounce back informing them their email was not sent and they could correct their error.

Free email accounts are very popular these days. But if you’re serious about your business and your brand, it might be time to consider how current and potential clients are judging you by a simple email address.

Call and talk to us about the Importance of Professional Email Addresses.

We’ll be more than happy to tell you how our services can help your business be more professional, starting today.

Sales

Toll Free: 1-866-320-0011 then choose option # 1
Local: 1-905-481-3251 then choose options # 1
E-mail: sales@allcore.ca
Hours: Mon-Fri: 9:00AM – 5:00PM EST

Stay tuned for Importance of Professional Email Addresses – Part 2 – The Benefits of having an email with your domain name