Written by Justin Ensz
Graphic designer and webmaster

When working with clients and asking for their email address to place on their website, business card, or other promotional piece, often I’m given something attached to Yahoo, MSN, Gmail, or the epitome of free web mail — Hotmail. Today’s blog is devoted to clarifying what a professional email address is and how it is looked at in the business world.

Your email address plays a valuable role in your company’s identity because it provides you a professional outlook and retains your brand through all points of contact. Yahoo, Gmail, etc. are all great for a personal account and are useful for friends and family, but when it comes to your business, your image deserves consistency. Additionally, by separating your email accounts — business and personal — it will help organize your work from play. It may even prevent you from forwarding that hilarious video to your client instead of your pal by mistake.

If your business has a website, it is easy to set up an address under your URL address for you and anyone in your company. For example, your new address could be bobsmith@professionaldomain.com. You won’t even have to give up your current (i.e. Yahoo, Gmail) email address — the one most of your contacts have saved in their address book. Your new email address will forward mail to your personal account and can even send mail out of your personal account under your business address. Most hosting companies provide this service free of charge as part of the website hosting package. Either you, your host, or a web programmer can help setup your new email addresses, a simple process.

Once you’ve set up your professional email address account, there are a couple of options. You might find that you like the new interface of your host’s email service better than your Hotmail interface and switch over – exporting and importing your saved contact list is easy to do. Or if you still feel more comfortable using your previous email account, you can setup email forwarding to that address. Now you can start promoting your new email address on your business materials and correspondence.

If you have a personal email account that needs to be switched to a business account or if you need to set up a business email address, you can let us know by filling out our web quote form. Just check the box that is labeled “Hosting administration” and let us know that you are interested in “setting up email” inside the “Additional details” box or call us at 503-588-2822.