The Business Owner’s Guide to Email Addresses

Business Owner's Guide to Email Addresses
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    Business Owner's Guide to Email Addresses

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    As entrepreneurs and citizens of the internet, it’s likely that you’ve got an assortment of email addresses. It can be hard to figure out which ones to use when, and when it is time to create a new one. To answer those questions, I’ve created this Business Owner’s Guide to Email Addresses.

    Note: this guide is only attempting to tackle the question of email addresses, not of email accounts. That’s a whole other guide….

    Don’t Use a Free Email Address

    Fertheluvofgawd, if you are really in business, you absolutely must have a branded email address. A domain is $12 per year, you can set up a forwarding address for free. It is not expensive or complex, so there’s no excuse not to be using [email protected].

    If that email address forwards to your Yahoo or Gmail account, fine. Your email service provider typically doesn’t matter to the people that you correspond with (but you should know this). Besides, you should only be checking email one place. But do not, under any circumstances put an @gmail.com, @hotmail.com or, heaven forbid, an aol.com email address on a business card. That’s a clear signal to others that you aren’t serious about your brand or your business.

    Create Email Accounts for Your Employees

    If you hire someone (contractor or W2) and they need to correspond via email in the course of their duties, set them up with a company email account that has a company email address. Not only does this give them credibility and help them look professional when representing your business, it also ensures that you own that existing and future correspondence when they move on from your company. Creating a free Gmail address for your intern is doing both you and them a great disservice.

    Use a Different Email Address for Marketing

    As a person who exercises full control over my inbox and systematically gets to Inbox 0 everyday, I have a lot of filters set up (and I encourage others to do the same). The point of those filters is to ensure that only actionable items arrive in my inbox. This means that the marketing emails that I’m subscribed to end up in a folder that only gets checked once a week (and anything I don’t want, I unsubscribe from).

    While I’m all for ensuring that every marketing contact feels as personal as possible, if you are using your personal email address to send your marketing emails, then everything you send from your personal address is ending up in a “check later” folder. And probably not just for me.

    The other downside to using one email address for direct, marketing and transaction (purchase or account) emails is that the receiver has a harder time distinguishing one from the other. I recommend creating a separate email address to use for marketing emails. If you have an ecommerce or membership component to your business, it’s also a good idea to create a separate email address for transaction or account-related emails.

    Recognize that Email Addresses Can Be Spoofed

    Phishers and hackers are getting very sophisticated these days. Recent tactics to glean information or money via email have included registering domain names that are 1 character off and then creating nearly identical email addresses to those of financial leaders in an organization to request wire transfers from the accounting team.

    Just because it “looks” like it is from a certain email address does not guarantee that it is. And this is is also an opportune time to remind everyone that EMAIL IS NOT SECURE. It has never been a secure form of communication. Anything you put in an email can be read by someone else during the transmission of the email.

    Domains can be made more secure by creating DKIM and SPF records that can prevent your domain from being used to create spoofed emails. That can be a bit on the technical side for most users, so you might find someone to assist you with that. It is also good to note here that having these records on your domain can help with email deliverability, especially if you’re using a third-party service like ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, ConvertKit or some other email marketing service to send on your behalf.

    Create a “Generic” Email Address for Public Contact Info

    It’s a good idea to make it easy to get in contact with you. That being said, email addresses are still being scraped off websites. So you don’t want to necessarily be posting your direct email address. Even though most email service providers have pretty great spam filters, it is a good idea to create a “generic” email address to post publicly. You know, like that info@ email address. But, as in every other part of your business, let your brand personality shine through here. You can use hello@, whatsup@, hithere@, relaxing@ or whatever else is aligned with your business and services.

    Use the “+” Hack for Unique Email Addresses

    This is for Gmail and Google Apps users only (sorry Office365 folks). There’s a “trick” that’s been around for a long time that allows you to create as many unique email addresses as you want. All you have to do is add a + and additional characters after your username. For example, if your email address is [email protected], you can use [email protected] as a different email address that will still deliver to [email protected].

    Here’s how I use this “hack”:

    • Testing forms (especially subscription forms): This way I can keep testing and not have to worry about the email address already being subscribed.
    • Signing up for services: If I need to initially sign up for a service on behalf of a client, I’ll add +clientname to the end of my username. That way it is clear who the service is for. Additionally, if I need to create multiple accounts for the same service, this also works.
    • Tracking & filtering: When signing up or subscribing, I’ll add +servicename so that I can easily filter off emails that come in from that service, or track if a company has shared my email address.

    Got other questions about email addresses and business? Let me know in the comments.

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