Email today has become a norm, where free accounts are plentiful and you can spin up a Hotmail or Gmail account in minutes.
But to all those people in business, does this really cut it? Yes these email providers may be free, but how does this impact your opportunities.
Here are 6 things to consider if you are yet to get yourself a custom domain email address…
True marketing potential
With an email address that includes your domain, every single email you send essentially links your site. It exposes your site more and reminds people who you are and, by extension, what you do.
Every time someone sees an email from yourname@gmail.com, it might remind them of who you are. If they see one from yourname@stuffyourlovedones.com.au, then they’ll remember what and where your business is.
Credibility and Professionalism is critical
If a customer or potential client receives your emails and sees that it’s from a free email address, it may convey the message that you are not to be taken seriously. This is a huge risk for a business, especially small ones.
Contemplate this… If you receive a sales email, which would you more likely trust – the one from flowerstore@gmail.com or from sales@flowerstore.com?
The former appears like the business hasn’t even invested the small amount of time and money it takes to create a professional email address. It leaves you wondering if they cut costs and effort on something so essential, what else could you be risking by having business with them.
You want customers to see the effort you put into your business. That builds trust and confidence and in turn, will translate in ongoing business.
The other major factor you must consider with this aspect is spam filters, which treat custom emails as less likely to be spam rather than a free generic email address.
Increased delivery and open rates
If you try to send mass emails from a free account, you’ll immediately see the difference.
Emails from free accounts are more likely to be flagged as spam. This is understandable, as spammers are less likely to spend money on creating email addresses that end up getting banned.
Not only that – Gmail has also banned mass mailings from their account, limiting users to 500 per day (a small fact that many people do not realize). This makes it challenging for you to send bulk emails to your customers using a free Gmail account, not that this would be recommended anyway.
Using custom email accounts eliminates this threat.
Most email hosting providers offer the service to accommodate businesses that are interested in email marketing. With that in mind, they won’t impose stingy email limits. A win for you!
No more monetizing your data & no more ads
Many free email services utilize a business model that monetizes you in some way shape or form to at least cover the cost of providing the email service.
Ads are a very common method to do this and frankly there is nothing wrong with this in principle. Just keep in mind that your data may be mined by these companies to target ads that are relevant to you.
In the end, nothing is truly free. It’s just that you’re not their customer. Their customer is the entity that posts the ads. Naturally, these free services will do what they need to keep their customers happy.
This isn’t the case for paid email services. They don’t rely on ads for revenue, so you get seamless service without the distraction. It may cost you more, but securing your private info is one good payoff.
Security
With custom email accounts you tend to benefit from more access to privacy and access settings.
Let’s say you your employees use a personal email to conduct business with your customers. When they resign, you won’t be able to retrieve those emails back. Turning them over to another employee will be impossible.
To make things worse, data from these emails can end up in people with bad intentions.
If you give your employees a custom email, you keep their emails in your jurisdiction — even when they leave. Turning them over to new employees will then be easy. More importantly, you get to protect your information.
It’s cost effective
If you have already purchased a domain and a hosting plan, it is likely that this will bundle with your custom email solution.
This means that the emails are generally hosted with the website on the same server instance, saving you money.
Make the most out of what you paid for. Now that you know the benefits of having a custom business email, don’t miss out on the added service.
Another alternative is to get an email hosting only if you don’t need a website hosted. This can be as cheap as $5 a month depending on how much mail space you need and how many accounts you want.
