Here's an easy way to build a professional online business identity that engages customers

As the saying goes, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” This rings true not only in person, but also for your online business identity. For customers and business users in the digital age email communications have never been more important; meaning your business email address is an integral part of your business identity. Choosing an email address which is right for your business is key. While there are a number of free options available offering decent storage and friendly user interfaces, a professional email domain could be the business essential you didn’t realise you needed.

Put simply, an email domain is the web address that comes after the “@” symbol in an email address. Meaning that investing in a professional email domain puts your business at the heart of your email communications.

Here are five reasons why it’s important to choose a professional email program for your small business to engage with customers:

It gives you a professional presence

It may sound obvious, but the reputation value of a professional email address is more than you might think. A recent GoDaddy study found that an impressive 45 percent of potential customers are influenced by your email domain when it comes to trusting small businesses online – almost as many as are influenced by online reviews. Nearly one in four people are concerned about sharing personal information with a business that uses a more generic ISP or email provider address. If your business relies on cold-emailing or pitching, a professional email domain, matching your website address, can reduce the chances of being marked as spam or otherwise deleted.

You become more memorable

By using a unique email domain, you can help ensure your business stands out from the crowd. Your professional email allows for more creativity in terms of personalising your addresses. Whether this is opting for using your employees’ names or roles, in front of your business name, can help your customer remember who they are engaging with. The humble email address can play an important part in the branding of your business. An interesting email structure or wacky name for example could help to set your business apart from the crowd. This could be giving your employees roles nicknames, such as “theproductguy” or “thesalesdude”, and using these as identifiers for your email addresses. The more you stand out, in a way that is suitable in your industry, the more likely it is that potential customers are going to remember to come back.

It makes customer service easier

A professional email address makes managing multiple channels, for example general enquires, sales or media enquiries, easier as well as presenting a consistent brand across all three touch-points. Opting for a shared inbox makes it easier to ensure a customer email is never missed; whether you use separate mailboxes for each channel or team or by forwarding emails to the right team member. This means emails are actioned without filling up server space. This approach to customer emails is much simpler than the process of managing, deleting, and migrating mail between multiple free inboxes; freeing up your time to focus on customer service itself.

Your brand gets greater air-time

Which name would you rather imprint on your customer’s mind: your business’ or that of a major multinational internet or email provider? A professional email address builds the association between you and the business that you represent. When it comes to word-of-mouth referrals, making your email easy to remember could be the difference between a new lead and an empty mailbox.

You’re probably paying for one anyway

If you already have registered a domain name for your business and you are hosting it with a major provider, you may already have the option to create your professional email address account using your domain name. GoDaddy’s basic web hosting package for example, allows you to create 100 email addresses using your domain name. That’s enough for most small businesses to support their entire teams, catch-all email addresses even the office pet. Taking advantage of this with your provider, is an easy way to integrate your online presence and share your professional image with your customers.