Over the past few weeks, I have read a few articles from well-meaning people who spent time telling us why we should not use internet based email accounts for our business. They were all pretty much on the same tangent. “It does not do anything for the credibility of your business”.
“I actually met some professional looking business people in recent weeks who I had swapped business cards with. They seemed highly confident, knew their stuff and could answer my questions and I was happy to have met them. On looking at their business cards, they actually had their email address as an internet based account. Immediately they lost credibility with me, I immediately thought that they were fly-by-night’s. I couldn’t understand why you would have blahblahforexample@gmail.com on your business card and not a domain email address.
So the articles I had read did make sense now I understood. However in all the articles none of them mentioned the benefits of using an internet based account. In fact if used properly, an Internet-based email account can support your business and free up domain traffic, keeping more space on your server and costs down. But please don’t advertise them on your business card or your brochures. Your Internet based account is perfect for subscribing to websites, opening online accounts, subscribing to newsletters etc. For anything that you must receive on a regular basis, you can always forward to your domain email by using a filter.
Organising a domain name is easy and very affordable from as little as $10 for two years. So why wouldn’t you get your own domain, do some research, see if your business name is available and yes you must have it hosted in order to run your email through it and hosting costs a little bit more but it all adds to your business branding and credibility. If you want to be taken seriously in the business world, do not give out a business card with an internet based email address.
If you want people to invest in you, you first need to invest in yourself.
