Your website, social media profiles, logo and business cards – they’re all recognised as being a part of your branding; but what about your email address? If you have your own business, you’ve probably got your own cool domain name (mybusiness.co.uk for example) and you’ve got everything looking just right.
But you could be missing an opportunity.
Having a professional-looking domain name is absolutely the right thing to do, but if you’re not using your domain for your email too – you’re missing a trick. The chance to have your name (and by association, your website) in front of your customer shouldn’t be overlooked.
Let’s look at an example, let’s say you’re a plumber and you’re called Nick’s Plumbing, so you’ve registered nicksplumbing.co.uk – but your email address is nicksmith89@yahoo.com – this is probably not the impression that you want to leave your customers. Plus, of course, it’s hard to remember as it doesn’t mean anything to the customer.
Now, the domain you’ve registered (nicksplumbing.co.uk) almost certainly comes with the ability to have [something]@nicksplumbing.co.uk – that would be a much better fit, easier to remember, and of course, you have that extra bit of branding out there as people see, hear or type your email address, they’re seeing your website address also.
How do I use my domain for email?
The process is a little different for each domain registrar (GoDaddy, 123-Reg, TSO Host etc.), but if you look in the hosting section, you will see options to create mailboxes (a mailbox would represent an email address, and would normally be the bit before the @nicksplumbing.co.uk – so creating a mailbox called “info” would result in “info@nicksplumbing.co.uk” being set up)
So there you have it, it’s as simple as selecting ‘add’, choosing some details and hitting ‘save’. The result of course though could be far greater. You can brand your vehicles, print your business cards and tell everyone that wants to contact you that they can do so by emailing “info@nicksplumbing.co.uk”.
It’s more professional and easier for your customers to retain.
Can I get loads of extra features?
Absolutely – we’re always wanting to give you more. There’s a great system called G Suite (formerly Google Apps for Business) that is based on the Gmail (Google Mail) system that you probably already know and love. It also allows you to share calendars, delegate access to your inbox (great if you have a team, or work with a virtual assistant), collaborate within the same document, at the same time as other people (so you’ll see what they type, as they type it) and loads more.
It costs £3.30 per account, per month – so it can easily scale with your business as it grows. If you’d like to give that a go, you can get a free trial of G Suite and see how it works, just head to https://goo.gl/rmuQOw.
I may need some help with this, can Hypestar help me?
If you’d like to set emails, or G Suite, up for your online business, but you’re not sure how to do it – get in contact. There’s always a member of the team on hand to give advice or book you in for a handy 1:1 session to get you running at full speed on the internet.
