Branded email Guide for small business owners
Does your email address brand your business? When you give out your email address do, customers even know that its a business email address? Branding your business is important to its success and its a portion of what marketing is all about. An email address provides an important and very cost effective opportunity to brand your business.
branded email for small business owners
An example of emails are as follows and graded (given this website as the business):
- kyle_1234@gmail.com
- Bad (has nothing to do with my business even though my name is in it or, is it really my name or some other person with that name?)
- adwords-articlescom@gmail.com
- Better (Contains a website reference but there’s no way to insure I can get this address plus, it still belongs to gmail and not me)
- kyle@adwords-articles.com
- Best (contains my name and my website address, very personalized and professional, anyone who see’s this knows my name, the name of my business or website and has a means to contact me)
Which one of these does your company email address look like?
Every time someone sees this on my website, on a business card, flyer, brochure, or I say it to someone in person, Im branding myself and my small business.
Id much rather brand myself and my business and not someone elses business. Why would I want to do that. Im not building a business for them, im building it for me.
The same rule applies to MLM (multi-level-marketing) and affiliate program providers that provide you with a website and or email address. For example; SuperDupperTravelCompany.com allows you to resell their travel products and will reward you with a tiny percentage of the profits (maybe). They tell you they will allow you to use “yourbusinessname@supperduppertravelcompany.com.” To go along with the website that they are giving you “www.supperduppertravelcompany.com/yourbusinessname.”
They may also tell you its a huge reason to sign-up and resell their product. The fact is this is likely costing them very little, especially considering that every time you promote your business, you are also promoting their business since the email is branded with their companies name. Nice trade huh, in fact, some would say your a marketing tool for these companies and whatever you keep on a sale equates to a very low advertising cost for them.
One response that I often here from small business owners is, “we don’t have the money for this type of email address so we use a free one.” Or I hear “I do not know how to get it done and don’t have the time to do it.” Consider the amount of time you could save if you could communicate with multiple customers at the same time with email instead of one at a time by fax or phone.
Read about a real life example here
*Solution to the problem
Cost -
At the time of this writing, GoDaddy was selling domain name registration for $9 a year and web hosting with 500 email accounts for under $50 a year. Total cost of less than $60 a year . Im not one to count another small businesses money or analyze their budget but if a small business cant afford $60 a year for branded email accounts then they should probably close the books and sell the company after reading this.
What you need -
To get a branded email for your business you need 2 1/2 things:
- Domain Name – get it at GoDaddy
- Web Hosting with POP3 email – GoDaddy
- If you feel that you need someone to implement and configure these 2 items for you contact us. Most companies that sell these services will help you with configuring and using them at no additional charge either with online documentation or by phone.
How to do it -
- Decide on a domain name for your company. Take your time and consider whether it is a good representation of your company or not. Try to choose a domain name that is easy to remember. Make sure its not to long. Use hyphens if the name you want is not available (i.e. your-company-name.com). Remember all of the email addresses that you create will include this domain name, (yourname@yourcompanyname.com). Many business owners assume their domain is available because they have not registered it. Often this not the case. See if your desired domain name is available by searching here.
- Contact a domain registrar and register the domain.
- Thats it! From there you either access and configure the email address using the a web interface (most companies will provide this type of access) OR configure Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Mail for VISTA users. for access on your desktop or laptop.
- If you have a domain (i.e. yourcompanyname.com) currently registered you likely have email accounts included. In this case your 75% of the way there. Contact the Registrar (company you registered your domain with) about email configuration and set up you email account/s. If email is not included ask the company about adding email accounts to the service.
Read about advanced set-up and use of email ( like cell phone and multiple PC email) here
*NOTE: I do not use any of the GoDaddy services mentioned here nor do I promote their services for reward, I mentioned them because they have a well known brand off of the internet and most folks have heard of them. I am not aware of any unusual problems with their services.
