What would you think? Would that demonstrate business savvy to you? Would you consider that to be professional? Well branded? Wouldn’t you wonder why it wasn’t “steve@apple.com”?

That simply would never happen. Why? Because you don’t build the world’s most valuable company without understanding the importance of image, branding and appearing professional.

Nearly every day…

Nearly every day in my business, I encounter business people, that hand me a business card or brochure with a Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL or sbcglobal.net email address. It’s perplexing to me, because most of these people have a domain name, and a company website listed too.

Are you one of these people?
Do you use an email address provided by your internet service provider (ISP), even though you have a company web site? Sure, it’s free, but is it smart?

Small Problem, you don’t own or control it.
Today, youremail@sbcglobal.net may work just fine. But one day you may decide to move to an area where SbcGlobal doesn’t serve, or they are too expensive, or any number of possible scenarios, you need to get an internet connection from someone else–like Comcast.

Now what? Yes, you are locked into an email address that you don’t own or control. Now you must notify every business contact and friend about the address change if you want to continue receiving email from them. And your business cards, brochures, letterhead, stamps, printed materials and website all just become obsolete. Time to spend lots of money updating them all!

And guess what, you’ll now be locked in again to a comcast.net email address, so you’ll get to enjoy repeating that cycle again in the future.

Big Problem, you look small and lack brand savvy.
Besides having no control over your email address, if you actually have your own domain, it’s terrible from a marketing and branding perspective to use a free or ISP-provided email account. Instead of your email address reinforcing your company name, it’s providing free advertising for Yahoo, Google, AOL or Hotmail. You are weakening your brand, and strengthening theirs!

Can I just forward all my domain email to my Yahoo account?
This also is a bad idea, because when you reply to these business contacts, they will have sent email to “youremail@yourdomain.com” yet you will respond from “sweetscreamingmonkeys@yahoo.com” and it’s confusing, and further damaging to your image.

Rule #1.
Splurge the $25 (or less) per year to own your own domain name. You will own it forever, you will control it, it will never change. You will build your own name, your own brand, and you will look business savvy. You can have the same email address for as long as you keep your domain registered, and you can have as many email addresses as you want.

If you already have a domain name and aren’t using it for email, start using it immediately. If you are in business, it is well worth the cost to have a permanent email address that is fully in your control and reinforces your company name and brand.

Need help registering a domain, and setting up your hosting and email accounts? Contact me today.

-Preston Kincaid