Is your email address really yours?

At Areoff we conducted a recent study of local businesses in Essex and found that a staggering 42% do not own their own email address. This shocking fact was gleaned by looking at advertisings on buildings, vehicles and in local newspapers and magazines.

Instead of having a straightforward email address like info@ourbusiness.com a significant number of local business have ourbusiness@oneofthewellknownISPs.com. And quite often the email addresses we noticed were far less memorable than that?

Why do small companies in particular go without having their own email address even when they have their own website? Most companies who provide hosting for websites offer at least 10 email accounts within the same package so there is little excuse not to have your own email company address. Yes, it may involve going to your website developers or hosting company and finding out how to set all this up but the benefits for your business can be immeasurable and the pain of having to change your address if you change ISP, quite costly. And if your existing website designers or hosting company aren’t obliging or helpful, then take your business elsewhere as there are many others out there willing to provide a fantastic package.

So what is the problem with having mybusiness@anotherisp.com when your email address seems to work fine and your inbox is full of hundred’s of junk mails and several relevant ones each day? The most obvious reason is perhaps not so obvious. If you have a falling out with your ISP and you want to change from say BT to Tiscali for your broadband connection, you loose that BT address that is all over your stationery, your vehicles, your shopfront, your advertising in yellow pages, magazines or the trade press. You can see that there is going to be a potential loss of enquiries and business if people email you at your old address that’s no longer in use because you’ve given your ISP the boot. If you have your own email address, that will never change so long as you keep the same domain name, and that’s unlikely to change unless you change business. The convenience, cost benefits and continuity of business from keeping the same email address even when you change ISP are clear to see.

And the other reason comes down to marketing. Why do you want to give free advertising to the large ISP’s via your email address? Surely, you’re in business and want to promote your company name or brand wherever and whenever possible. mail@mybusiness.com is fare superior promotion for your business than mybusiness@theirISP.com.

So get onto your website developers and hosting company if you deal with them direct and get your own email address up and running today. All email account packages will allow you to forward one email address to another so you can always have emails sent to your ISP account fired off to your business email address so you don’t loose emails during the transition. Stop advertising for the ISP’s and promote yourself with an email address that matches your web address.