Small Business E-mail Addresses
In the last couple of newsletters we’ve discussed how to plan for your new website for the sea change business. This month I thought a discussion about e-mail addresses would be valuable. I find so many small businesses have e-mail addresses that don’t include their website domain name and don’t earn their keep.
For example, the website might be “www.mybusiness.com” but the e-mail address is mybusiness@bigpond.com. If you’ve invested in the domain name make it earn its keep and work for you. Have a small number of e-mail addresses for different purposes in your business. Such as info@mybusiness.com for general e-mail enquires. If you have an eBay presence have ebay@mybusiness.com, for different people working in your business have e-mails personally named, eg. janewilson@mybusiness.com etc.
If you check out the Customer Service page on www.creativelybelle.com you’ll see a number of e-mail addresses catagorised by business function. This helps visitors wanting specific info to feel confident about where to send the e- mail, lets me have auto-responder e-mail messages attached for instant info sharing for some of the addresses and demonstrates ways you can have a small range of useful addresses that lets you pre-sort e-mails as they arrive.
Another valuable feature of using your own business domain name in e-mail addresses is tracking who is selling your e-mail address when you sign up for services or newsletters. I set up specific e-mail addresses per newsletter I sign up for online. For example, if I signed up for a NBC newsletter I would create and use for that newsletter only nbc@creativelybelle.com Then, if I got spam mail using that e-mail address from anyone but NBC I would know they have sold my details and would be able to demonstrate that my privacy rights have been violated. E-mail addresses are important for promoting your business, no matter what size it is. Make your domain name earn its investment and promote a well organised, professional business with it!