When you start your own business, one of the biggest challenges is putting together all the pieces that aren’t part of your core business model. Even if you’re ready and able to deliver your product or service, being a business these days requires a lot more than just opening shop and serving customer. On the tech-side alone, almost every business regardless of industry will eventually need a website, a mobile app, a social media presence, an inbound marketing blog and a whole collection of cyber-security measures. However, one subtle aspect that ties the entire suite of technology together is a unified company email system. This is how your customers will contact you about orders and support, how your employees will contact each other, and how your investors will reach you if they’re interested in funding your startup.
While your everyday personal email functions just fine in a temporary way while you get everything set up, there are a lot of good reasons why you should take the time to establish an official business email that aligns with your company website domain name.
1) Purpose-Built Inboxes
The first and most useful reason to build a business email system to go with your website domain is to sort incoming messages. When starting up, many entrepreneurs think that their personal inbox can handle the business correspondences with suppliers, business partners, and customers but as your business grows more successful, the messages will multiply. By having individual company inboxes that handle each type of message, you can address different aspects of your business one at a time or delegate the managing of a particular inbox to an employee or co-founder.
Email Addresses to Include
- [email protected] – the official email for the website
- [email protected] – where customers can send questions and concerns
- [email protected] – handles all your financial transaction messages
- [email protected] – where customers can send reviews and testimonials
- [email protected] – your personal exec email address
- [email protected] – one official email address for each of your employees
2) Easy to Remember
The next great benefit of using a matching set of company email addresses is that your customer never have to guess how to reach you. When you join long tradition of business email configuration, customers who need support won’t even need to find your support address listed because it can be predicted. They know your domain name, they know you’re a company, and will naturally assume that [email protected] will send their support requests directly to you. A properly configured company email system is not just easier for clients to remember, they’ll expect it and be surprised if you do something different like ask them to send messages to your personal email instead.
3) Looking Professional
Setting up your business email address is a sign of entrepreneur maturity. At first, when you’re still pulling your business plan together, no one is surprised to see a personal email address with a domain like @gmail.com. However, once your business has matured enough to develop a website and start building a public online presence, the community will expect you to start answering to the official set of emails like support@ and so on, much like answering to your last name when you become an employee for the first time as an adult. Having a website and still giving out your personal email address is a lot like asking the business world to call you by your childhood nickname.
4) Easy Expansion
Finally, sticking with your personal email address is a clear indication that you’re not thinking ahead. Even if you’re the only person in your startup right now, eventually you should be planning to have employees, expand your office space, and start building your company toward national recognition. These future employees definitely won’t be able to answer customer requests through your personal email, but they can sort and work tickets that are sent to your company support inbox.
Setting up your business email system is a natural part of a business growing up and shows that even if you’re small right now, your company is going places. For more business tech tips, contact us today!
