In the world of business, nothing ruins your credibility more than having a bad email address. Imagine for just a moment, you go into a networking meeting and meet this person who you think you want to do business with. You exchange business cards and the next day at work, you are about to email him when you look down at the email address, and the address is grampslovesbieber@yahoo.com. Credibility gone. Period.
Here are 5 things that you want to make sure of when you are creating your own professional email.
- Keep it simple. There’s a reason why most people use their first and last name or some plain boring variation of that–it’s timeless. When you are creating your professional email, it isn’t the time to try to be creative. You want to maintain your professionalism, and it’s really hard to do that with just about anything but your name. Keep your title out of your email. Think towards the future. What happens if you change jobs? What happens if you get a promotion. Nip this potential problem in the bud and just use your name, chances are, it won’t change.
- Get your own .com and use it! I’m tired of reading @msn.com, @gmail.com, @hotmail.com, and the hundreds of other standard email addresses that you can find out there. Your email address helps to brand you and your business, and if you’re trying to be viewed as a professional, you really need an email that advertises you and your business, not Windows or Google. If you are just infatuated with gmail and all the powerful functions, check out Google Apps for business. GoDaddy also has a mail client that you can setup to use for a few email addresses.
- Get your own email address. Quit sharing email addresses. When I send emails, I like to send them to one person. If you have two phone numbers for someone, and one is a home phone and the other is their cell, you probably will call the cell first, because you know that they are the only one who will be answering that call. Not to mention sonnyandcher@hotmail.com doesn’t help your case when you try to tell a business client that you are independent and make your own decisions.
- Don’t use your birthday. Truthfully, outside of me sending you a birthday card just so I can get an extra touch in through my marketing so I can stay top of mind, I don’t really care when your birthday is. fredastaire1899@yahoo.com doesn’t mean any more to me than fredastaire@hollywoodmovie.com. If you have to add numbers to your email address, you are probably better off to just find a new email address. Better yet, follow the advice above and you shouldn’t have to worry about that.
- Spel thngs rite in ur email adress. When you spell something wrong in your email address, it becomes a point of confusion for you to give your email out. The rule of thumb is to make sure to have an email that can be easily understood on a cell phone, a landline, and if I am trying to remember it from memory.
While following these 5 general rules doesn’t insure that you will have success, it will guarantee that you don’t lose business because of your email address. Does that really happen? Yes. It does.
Nice post. I recently renewed one of my websites and have been thinking about making the switch for awhile. My main issue is a preference to have my business emails be separate from my overflowing personal emails, but you bring up some very good points which are nice to see from an outside perspective. Thanks for the post.