How to Get a Custom Email
Before starting an email marketing campaign, there are a few details that you will want to sort out. One of these is the matter of the email address that you are going to be sending from.
What do you need to do to give your campaign the best possible hope of being a success? Using a custom email address is a great start, so let’s take a look at how this can be done.
What Is a Custom Email?
This is simply an email address that includes your business name in it, rather than a generic Gmail or Hotmail address. So, if you are called John and you work for the Funny Unicorn Shoes Company then a custom email for you could be John@funnyunicornshoes.com rather than John@Gmail.com
Equally, the address could be for the whole team rather than for a specific person. It could be ‘marketing’, ‘info’ or any other name that you want to put in here.
This might not sound like a massive difference. Surely if the message is well-written and it gets delivered to the right person then it doesn’t matter, does it? Well, the truth is that using a custom email is a lot more important than you might think that it is.
Why Do You Need to Get One?
Why is using a custom email address a good idea in marketing? The simplest answer is that it looks a lot more professional. Going back to the previous example, consider whether John@Gmail.com or Marketing@funnyunicornshoes.com is likely to inspire more confidence in the recipients of your messages.
Don’t forget that many people still receive lots of scam emails from dodgy addresses. If they see a personal address from a free domain, they may be on guard right away. If you write to people in a way that makes your company name easy to see then it helps them to identify it as coming from a trusted source.
Your potential customers might think that you are either cheap or lazy if you use a free email service. If they need to decide between you and a competitor then this could be a crucial factor that helps them to decide.
This approach also lets you maintain continuity if someone leaves the company or changes to a new role. Rather than emails now coming from Ted instead of John, they can carry on being sent out from the ‘marketing’ address or whatever you choose to use.
It is also worth mentioning that this can make your business seem bigger than it really is. If you have four or five different email addresses from the same domain, people will automatically assume that there is at least one person using each one.
On the other hand, if you use your personal, free email address what impression does this give? It is probably going to make the recipients think that you are a one-person company who is either just starting out or doing it as a hobby.
How it Helps Your Brand
There is no doubt that a custom email address can give your brand a welcome boost. This can be as simple as the recipients noticing your company name and being intrigued.
Then there is the fact that you are being consistent. Your leads may notice that you are always sending out emails and newsletters from the same, professional domain.
On their own, these are fairly small matters. However, you are building up an image in your customers’ minds of a successful, professional company that can be trusted.
What if you don’t use your brand name in your email address? A lead who was thinking of buying from you might be put off or might not even notice that the email is from the same company that they already like.
How to Get It
Is this going to be difficult and time-consuming to sort out? Thankfully, it isn’t. There are a couple of different ways of getting a custom email, with neither of them difficult to arrange.
The easiest is usually to get it done through your existing web host. You will already be paying for this additional service anyway, although it might cost you more to add a large number of email addresses.
The web hosting service will typically offer information or even tutorials on how to do this. In most cases, it is very easy to get going in next to no time.
Another option is to customize your Gmail or Hotmail by adding your domain to it. You are most likely to be interested in doing this if you prefer to stick to your existing email interface rather than learning how to use a new one. However, the end result is the same in terms of your new email address.
Steps to Getting Started
- Decide whether to use the web host or customize a service like Gmail or Hotmail
- Work out what addresses you want to use. Do you want to use people’s names or departments in front of the domain?
- Include administrator access so that continuity is ensured if anyone leaves
By making this change, you will present a smooth, professional image to everyone that is included in your future email marketing campaigns.