Having a business email is an absolute necessity to facilitate business communication and create brand awareness. A business email not only portrays you as a professional, but it gives your company a sense of credibility separating you from your competitors who choose to go with a free email address. Creating an email for business is considered to be the most effective strategy to gain the trust of your potential client base increasing your sales. 

If you are ready, let’s take a look at what a business email is and how to create one for your company.

What is a business email?

As its name suggests, a business email is a form of written communication between your company – including you and your employees –, and your customers, suppliers, and contractors. To establish professional relationships with your business partners, you will need to learn how to create a business email. In comparison to a generic email address (e.g.. [email protected]) which usually follows the structure of a name and number, followed by a well-known, free domain address, such as Gmail or Yahoo, a business email contains your company’s domain name like [email protected]. 

Besides the fact that you will promote your brand by displaying your company’s name in the email address, you can also make your company look bigger than it is by creating separate email addresses for each department. When you create business email divisions, such as [email protected] or [email protected], each email extension will be associated with a department or a function, making it easier for clients to get in touch with the right person within your company. Unlike a personal email address, a business email promotes growth, since you can add a separate email address for every employee individually. 

What do you need to create your business email?

• Domain: is the unique address of a website. Generally speaking, people tend to remember names easier than numbers, so it follows the literal naming conventions. It consists of a name that comes after “@” and an extension that is linked to the IP address. An example of a domain address could be [email protected]. Anyone can buy and register a domain name simply, by accessing a domain host or registrar like domain.com. Keep in mind that since a domain name is a unique address, you can pay the right to the name for a period of time, but you cannot purchase a domain that is already taken by someone else. 

• Hosting Provider: a service company or partner that will host your business email on the internet. An email server is responsible for distributing emails to the intended recipients, filtering out spam and phishing, and allocating storage for your email files. Usually, large companies have in-house email servers due to high traffic, but small businesses prefer a third-party hosting provider like Bluehost or SiteGround. Before you buy a hosting provider service, you should think of the features and services that you will need, such as a custom domain, uptime, customer care, security features, storage, and sending limits.

• Email System: a professional email provider that allows computers to transmit and receive messages, files, sounds, and images to other users. The email system helps you customize, manage and store your emails. You can rely upon an email system to protect you from dangerous content, having upgraded privacy policies and security features. A great example of a reliable email system is Zoho Mail. 

Alternatives and what is wrong with them?

Be careful with other communication platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Viber, or other messaging channels. The biggest problem with these applications is that they are not owned by your company, therefore you will have no control over your content. If Facebook for instance decides to shut down its website, your main communication platform will vanish as it has never existed. With a business email address, you can host the data in-house or remote through a third-party company, either way, it will keep the data secure and accessible all the time. 

On the other hand, free email websites like Gmail for business purposes are not the safest choice either. Your personal email is not being monitored since it would conflict with your privacy, meaning that received emails and attachments are not scanned for viruses and are not safe from breach attacks. In addition, a personal email address does not allow you to oversee the email deliverability and makes it extremely difficult to organize your messages. Due to message filtering, there is also a higher chance that your email from a generic provider will end up in the junk mail folder.

In contrast, an email for business is your company’s property, and you don’t depend on a third-party provider. You have full control over your deliverability, meaning that the emails will successfully arrive in the inbox, thus you can maximize the efficiency of email marketing while monitoring the activity and engagement of your customers. Moreover, emails sent from a domain address will never be treated as junk, regardless of the content of the message. A business email has a higher level of security, which means that all your emails will be encrypted, guaranteeing that your data and sensitive information, like financial statements or employee contracts, will be protected.

Closing Thoughts: Do I need a business email?

Absolutely yes! It doesn’t matter if your business is small or big, you need a business email to establish a professional online presence for your company. Having a unique email address for business ensures that as long as you are registered for a domain name, your email address will be yours and all your information will be secured from data breaches and online hackers. 

Remember, your first impression is your last impression. Nobody wants its customers to misjudge their company’s value and credibility by missing out on making a positive first impression. A business email is the first step for transforming a random business into a trusted resource and persuading your customers to get in touch with your company.