So you’ve started your business, and have gotten by with the free @gmail.com email for now. We’ve all been there, but you’re now in business for a couple of years, gaining more customers, and want to be taken more seriously.
Enter: a professional email address — an email with your business’ domain (ex: [email protected]). It’s one of the things I feel that every business should have.
I’m a strong believer that the credibility and legitimacy of your business can easily be judged by an email address.
Imagine our business email address read: [email protected].
It’s not professional, and nor does it show that I’m very serious about my business.
So how do you get a professional email address, and what are the best practices for your email signature? Let’s take a look.
Where to get a professional email address
If you’re ready to take your business email to the next level, you’ll need to get a domain based email. Unfortunately, there’s not any good solutions that are free.
Yes, you can get a free email through cPanel in your hosting (if this applies to you), but it’s not reliable and not easy to use or setup.
Therefore, we recommend either Google Workspace or Zoho Mail. Both of these options are great for setting up your professional email address.
Keep in mind, you must have a domain in the first place before you can get a domain based email. If you have a website, then you’re all set. However, if you don’t have a website up and running, be sure to purchase your domain first at Namecheap or any other domain registrar of choice.
At AWD, we use Google Workspace which provides you the suite of tools that we all use and know, such as Docs, Calendar, Google Meet, and more.
Plus, if you’re coming from a free Gmail account, with Google Workspace you get the same look and feel — your inbox will look exactly the same so you don’t have to learn how to use anything new.
Not only that, Google Workspace is reliable, easy to setup, and very affordable at only a single Starbucks coffee cost per month 🙂
What professional email address should I choose?
I’m sure you’ve seen many different kinds of emails used, such as: info@, support@, hello@, and more. Depending on your business structure, number of employees and departments, will help you decide what naming structure to use for your professional email addresses.
For individuals, you can use first name only or first initial and last name, such as: adam@ or awright@.
For departments, you can use: marketing@, support@, customerservice@, accounting@, or whatever might suit you best.
For general emails, there are many options such as: info@, hello@, hi@, contact@, and so forth.
At the end of the day, it’s best to keep your professional email addresses as short and concise as possible — nobody likes to type out [email protected] (amiright?!)
3 Things you must include in your professional email signature
1. Your business logo & branding
Look, I know it may seem obvious, but including your business logo in your email signature should be the first thing you do. This allows constant brand recognition so that every single email you send, the person receiving it is seeing your logo over and over again. Plus, it makes you look more professional and credible.
2. Your contact info
Including your contact information in your email signature is, after all, the main reason for your signature. This should include your name, your title, your email, your phone number, and a bonus would be any social media profile links. Be sure to link all of these so they are easily clickable in the case the user wants to call you or visit your Instagram profile.
3. Your website (linked)
One of the most underrated pieces to an email signature is a link to your website. Personally, I can’t stand when I want to visit someone’s website and I have to go to Google to find it because they don’t have it in their signature.
To take it up a notch, use a service like Bitly to create a unique link that you can track how many times someone clicked your website link in your signature.
How to create your own professional email signature
Using a email signature generator
There are dozens of different tools online that allow you to generate a professional looking email signature. Our personal favorite is the one from Hubspot — it’s easy to use, has about 4 or 5 templates, and allows you to change the colors to match your brand.
We used Hubspot, this is what ours looks like:
Coding via html
If you want a really custom email signature that the online generators just can’t achieve, you can custom code it with HTML. If you have no experience with coding, I don’t recommend you tackle this on your own. Hire a web developer, like AWD, to create a custom coded signature for you and your team.
Don’t wait to get a professional email address
As you can see, there’s many benefits to making the leap to get a domain based email address — credibility, legitimacy and brand recognition to name just a few.
It’s affordable, easy to obtain, and should be taken seriously by any serious business owner. Paired with a great looking email signature, you’ll be looking sharp in no time!
