Email is your main contact point for your business, so it makes sense to put a little thought into setting up your business email address. Believe it or not, your email address can communicate things about you and your organization. Here are 5 tips to setting up your email accounts to show your business to the best advantage.

1. Use your domain name. It’s very common for small businesses to use a Gmail or Yahoo! account for their email address, because it’s free and simple. However, it definitely gives a less professional impression and can even cause your email to be caught in your customer’s spam filter. All major hosting companies offer free email accounts with your hosting costs, so you should always set up email with them so that your email reads “yourname@yourdomain.com”.
2. Use a “naming convention” for your email boxes. This means all email addresses for your company will follow the same strategy for naming, which gives a level of professionalism. On a technical level, all email boxes for your website must be unique, and a good naming convention can prevent duplication. (i.e. if you have two people named “Joe” at your company, one can be jsmith and one can be jbrown.) Below are several examples of good naming conventions. Note that using your first name can appear less professional, and might be a good choice if you are a non-profit organization or a business which has a family appeal.
   first initial + last name (ex: jsmith@yourdomain.com)
   full name (ex: joesmith@yourdomain.com or joe.smith@yourdomain.com)
   first name (ex: joe@yourdomain.com)
   firsname + last initial (ex: joes@yourdomain.com)
3. Create generic addresses for business areas. In small businesses, each person often wears many hats: sales, customer service, orders, receptionist, etc. As your business grows, however, you may be able to hire individual people to staff these areas. Rather than try to re-train your customers on the ‘right’ person to contact, why not set up email aliases such as “billing” and “information”. For now, you can forward these all to yourself, but you can switch them to the correct people as your business grows, without having to change your marketing materials.
4. Reply to customer email promptly. It seems like this would go without saying, but customer service is often the main or only differentiating factor between you and your competitors. Speedy reply to a customer email is a major part of good customer service, as the popularity of email over phone is increasing. One client I have had an unopened customer email sitting in their email box for over 5 months – egad! We can safely assume that customer went somewhere else! If you are not the type of person to check your email frequently, consider forwarding all emails to your mobile phone. As a last resort, if you know you can’t keep up with email, do not list an email address on your website of business cards. Rather, post a phone number, preferably a mobile phone, where you can usually be reached.
5. Manage your spam. Take steps to reduce your potential for receiving SPAM or unwanted email. If you get too much spam, valuable customer emails could get lost in the mess. Further, you will be tempted to change your email address, and this could make it difficult for past customers or contacts to find you. To prevent spam, do not post your email directly on any webpage – spammers can automatically get your email from the HTML code of the page. Rather, use a “Contact Us” form. If you need to post your email, such as in a message board or blog comment, just post a link to your contact us form on your website. As your business grows, you will naturally become a target for spammers, so you can add CAPTCHA technology to your form (i.e. users have to type a funny-looking word to prove they are a human). You can also use any number of good spam filters on the market to stem the tide of spam, though there is always a small risk that your customer’s email will be caught in the spam filter by accident, so make sure to check that area, too.