Saw a great message in a forum last week. It was a sample of email addresses and what they say about the sender. It backs up my own thoughts about email. There is a place for ‘cute’ and ‘silly’ email addresses but when you are operating a business and participating in business forums, it’s time to put away the ‘cute’ and ‘silly’ and start using ‘business’ or ‘clever’ email addresses.
To quote some of what I saw:
Your email address says a lot about you….
Details are key when you are looking for a job and one thing that gets looked over time and time again is what your email address says about you.
Here are some examples:
hotgirl@—- (Self explanatory)
johndoe1967@—- (You are showing your age before they have a chance to look at your information)
sallysmith1985@—- (Same as above)
markandmindy@—- (Too much personal info here)
jacksonsdad@—- (Again too much info)
When you’re in business you need to be taken seriously – even on forums. So your username and email address are an important part of your identity for your business and will help with your branding.
Even if you don’t have a website yet it doesn’t hurt to get a domain name and use it for your email addresses. Later when the website comes you’ll already have your domain and your email address won’t need to be changed.
Think carefully about setting up addresses like info@, admin@, webmaster@ – these are addresses spammers will send to easily and you will get inundated with spam.
Finally, if you do participate in a number of forums, then perhaps having an email address that is different to your regular business email might be worth doing – so you don’t get inundated with forum messages and spam to the one address. You can separate them out.
Beverly says
When I set up my business email I wanted something to indicate my communication skills so that’s why I chose the one I did. Very informative post.
Karlyn says
I’ve had sooooo many email addresses through the years. I finally stopped all that and settled with my google email address as my main address. I love google mail (Gmail) and I set up Gmail to check all my older addresses (the ones I can’t get rid off because they are attached to a domain) and direct them to one inbox. So convenient. I like my address now. I think it works for me, personal and business and I like that. It’s me. 🙂
Karen O'Bannon says
Good post.
VirtualProductions says
Having used a generic email address for many years, I’ve recently upgraded to my own branded email address. This has provided its own unexpected benefits of self-esteem and ownership of my business name.
What I didn’t realize at the time, is that every use of my email address is itself another opportunity to put the business name out there. It’s surprising how enquiries now come to me just based on this new opportunity to present my brand and services.
Great to see you put this concept out there. Such a simple idea is so often overlooked.