Should you use a professional email address?

One question I seem to get asked by a lot of my new clients is “Should I use a professional email address?”

This is an excellent question and I felt it was necessary to discuss the advantages in a format that is easily shared with future clients.

Let’s start with one of the most impactful situations I can think about. Your potential customer’s first impression of you.

The moment a potential customer sees anything like Yahoo/Google.com they get an immediate first impression that Joe isn’t professional. If Joe was professional logic would dictate that he would have a professional email address, the same one that his website domain uses. For example, if Joes website was www.JoesCompany.com then his professional email would be Joe@JoesCompany.com or any other username like Sales@JoesCompany.com

Sales@JoesCompany.com automatically gives the potential customer a better overall feeling about Joes Company.

First impressions are everything!!!

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Pro's for using a professional email address

Makes a great first impression
More control over plan & features
Better for Branding
Email Client can have powerful features
It’s the pro-choice

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Con's for using a professional email

Isn’t free
Might take more work to set-up

Comes down to cost!

Tth only good thing I can say about a free email account is that it’s “FREE”. You can’t really beat free, can you? Since I believe first impressions are huge in the business world and can mean the difference between a sale or no sale, I put a lot of stock in first impressions. That being said, the cost to have a professional email address is more than justified in my situation as I feel it really could cost me sales in the long run and that isn’t good for business. GoDaddy has Microsoft Office 365 “Online Essentials” plan that costs $5.99 per user /month and comes with Online versions of Office, including Excel, Word, PowerPoint and more 1 TB secure online storage for documents and files Professional email that uses your domain.

If cost is an issue then you can use your free email address no problem. Just keep in mind that it really does send the wrong impression to everyone that reaches out to you. When you factor in the loss of business that you may be experiencing from simply using a free email, you may realize that the extra cost of the professional email address is actually one of the best returns on investment when it increases your sales.

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