5 Reasons You Should Create a Custom Email Address for Your Business

The goal of a brand is to differentiate your company from the competition. Part of branding is your business name and your domain name. Once you have come up with a great domain name, it’s time to create one or more custom email addresses.

1. Anonymous email services are less professional
   
   Email services like Yahoo or Gmail are simple and free, but they do not inspire trust in your brand. If you are looking to do business with someone and you were corresponding via email, which person would you instinctively trust more? catlover4382@gmail.com or john.smith@homestead.com
   
   Free email services detract from the value you want to offer your customers and your brand. And since your competitors probably use custom email addresses, that might be the one factor that sends business elsewhere.
   
   Should this seemingly small thing make such a big difference? Probably not, but it does, subconsciously, generate an impression of you and your brand. Make sure that impression is a positive one.
   
   
2. Builds your brand
   
   Have you ever received a business card and seen the person’s email address printed on the card? How many times does curiosity get the best of you and you go to the website to check it out. That can’t happen with free email addresses. But, if you use you a custom email, you’re building your brand. Every place you have that branded email address is one more opportunity for new business!
   
   
3. Make as many as you need or want
   
   Even if you’re a one-person operation, you can create role emails like sales, customer service, orders, etc. This can give the impression that your company is larger than it is (which is not a bad thing). If you eventually hire someone to fill those roles, they can just take over that email.
   
   
4. Set a common format
   
   All employees can have an email address that follows a particular rule, for example, firstname.lastname@yourdomain.com. This provides consistency in your business, and customers can easily remember the formula for your company email addresses.Free emails do not provide that flexibility. In many cases, you will be forced to add numbers or underscores to get the address you want. Again, this detracts from your brand
   
   
5. Keeps all business emails in your control If your employees use a personal email address to correspond with your customers, what happens when they leave and you no longer have access to any of those emails.
   
   On the other hand, if you set up an account for each employee, you can always access that email. You can even set up a forward so all mail going to the old employee are redirected to the new one. Or, you could create a generic email for certain roles, like sales@yourdomain.com so that the new hire just takes over management of that account. They would just need to change the display name.