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10 Reasons Every Entrepreneur Needs a Branded Email Address
An email address that uses your company's name makes a more professional impression.
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When you’re starting a business, there’s a long list of steps to take to get your company off the ground. One task that is sometimes overlooked is setting up a professional email address. It is often tempting for new business owners to use a free or personal email account to save money, but this may not be the best solution. An email address that includes your company’s name helps strengthen your business’s public image, thus making your brand feel more established, identifiable and credible.
Below, we’ll explore the importance of branded email addresses and the steps you should take when setting them up for your business.
What is a branded email address?
A branded email address is one that has your business name or website in it. An example of a branded email address is johnsmith@smithandsons.com for the company Smith and Sons.
An email address like this conveys a message of trust to someone who visits your website and helps you build brand recognition. Often, people will take the web address from the back end of your email address and paste it into their browser to learn more about your company.
Why your business needs a branded email address
There are many benefits of using a branded email address, including increased open rates and improved customer trust. Here are 10 reasons your business needs one.
1. You gain credibility with customers.
When you come across a business that uses a free email account, what are your immediate thoughts? For most, the perception is that such a business might not be authentic or reliable. Questions might arise about the security of the business if it’s not ready to invest in a small monthly fee for a professional email account.
In today’s business landscape, credibility is key. If customers question your company’s reliability, they are less likely to purchase your goods or services. It also may affect how media outlets or other companies view your business. Having a professional email address that includes your domain name helps to establish your business as trustworthy and secure.
“As an entrepreneur, first impressions are everything — they set the stage for trust and credibility with clients, investors and employees,” said Stacey Cohen, CEO of Co-Communications Inc. “Since your email is often the first touchpoint, make it count!”
2. You save time by managing your website and email address in one place.
Running a business means time is always of the essence. Chances are, you deal with multiple logins daily to keep your business running. To save time, consider integrating your email with the purchase of your company’s web address. With this strategy, you can manage your email and website on the same platform.
Additionally, many platforms require domain-based email addresses for security purposes. Starting with a branded email address ensures you don’t waste time switching emails later.
“Some top-tier email-sending services (like Kit or Wavoto) won’t even allow you to use a generic email and require a domain-based email instead,” noted Wendy Shore, a marketing, branding and revenue strategist at Shore Advice.
3. Your brand gets a chance to shine.
When your emails appear professional, it elevates your business’s image. Conversely, a free email account might reduce your brand’s perceived value. A free email address can make it difficult to send personalized emails that are consistent with your brand.
Having an identifiable brand in your emails makes you stand out. It indicates that you take your business image seriously and consider how it appears to others. The more your customers recognize your emails, the more they’ll be acquainted with your business. This recognition can help build trust in your brand, which can lead to increased spending on your products over time.
“If you want to be recognized as a trusted, credible expert in your field, you need to have the brand assets to match,” said Katrina Owens, CEO of Knockout Marketing Directive. “A branded email address in addition to a website … are crucial elements for establishing an online presence and showing your audience that you take this work seriously.”
Branded email addresses are a form of marketing in themselves; they reinforce your brand with every communication. With branded email addresses, you can build standardized templates and signatures for all employees to use. This ensures that your logo, assets, and brand font and colors are applied consistently across all of your messaging.
4. Your emails are less likely to go to the spam folder.
Visualize this scenario: You’ve identified a potential lead you’d love to do business with. You’ve been trying to get in touch with them using your free email account but don’t hear back. After your fifth attempt, you begin to wonder whether your emails reached them. As it turns out, your emails were caught in their spam filters and never made it to their inbox. The bad news is, while you were figuring out the issue, your potential customer already moved on to your competitor.
This situation probably wouldn’t have happened with branded emails, which are more likely to make it to recipients’ inboxes.
“Make sure you connect your branded domain to your email service provider (ESP) and follow all the new rules for authenticating your domain and setting up DMARC [domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance],” advised Tina Bar, owner of Tina Bar Coaching. “This means your mass marketing emails will be delivered to inboxes and not marked as spam.”
Another tip to prevent your emails from being marked as spam is to send a stellar welcome email. First impressions count, even in the virtual world. With a compelling welcome email, you can ensure that your future communications are eagerly anticipated and not relegated to the spam folder.
5. Your staff members become brand ambassadors.
Do you plan on hiring? Do you currently have employees in different departments? If so, free email accounts won’t cut it, as they are usually limited to one user per email account. When your business has a branded email address, you can create and manage unlimited email accounts with ease. This means you can create an email account with each employee’s name or their role in the company.
“Branded emails … ensure that if you have employees or contract consultants, you can provide them with a branded email so … your brand is being reinforced, as is their legitimacy in working with you,” explained Catherine Whiteman, a public relations strategist at Gaffney Austin LLC.
Extra perks include autoresponders, mail forwarding, email aliases and mailing lists. With your own domain, you can unlock all of the opportunities email marketing can offer your business, because you’ll be able to customize a brand-friendly sender address. [Learn about the best email marketing services and software.]
6. You can get tech support when you need it.
Another advantage of having your own email address is that you won’t have to worry about tech support. Your web hosting company will provide phone, chat and email support if you have any issues. You can rest easy because your data will be backed up on the web hosting provider’s secured servers. In addition, the company likely has a community forum, video tutorials and articles to help you troubleshoot any problems. You’ll also enjoy high uptime guarantees, which minimize business disruptions.
7. Your business name may not be available if you use a free email account.
Email has been popular since the ’90s, so billions of email addresses are already in use. As a result, it might be nearly impossible to find a free email account with your business name.
This leaves you with the option to use extra numbers and characters in your email address, alongside your business name, but this might not look professional and could fail to represent your brand. If you go for your own domain and email address, you can use the name you prefer.
8. You get more control over your email addresses.
If your company were to change its name or your email address were to no longer reflect your business, a branded email ensures you can easily change your address without losing account access. This is especially helpful for newer or growing companies that are still refining their identity; it allows them to pivot or scale without undergoing major changes to their email accounts.
“Whether you choose to stay solo or grow your business with employees, there will come a time [when] a branded email address becomes necessary,” Bar noted. “Start now and build trust and authority the same way your larger competitors have done.”
9. You can often access additional tools.
Beyond email services, many providers offer expanded features, such as extra storage options and video and phone conferencing capabilities, which can enhance your business’s tool arsenal for no additional cost.
“I personally prefer Google Workspace because it offers strong security [and] integrates well with business tools and scales as a company grows,” said Christy Saia-Owenby, founder and CEO of MOXY Company. “It also provides custom filtering, collaboration tools and enhanced security that free email services don’t offer.”
10. You can trust that your emails will be stored securely.
A key consideration in business is ensuring that assets, information and communications are stored securely. Every interaction with a customer, employee or stakeholder is confidential and should be guarded as such.
With an unbranded email address, your interactions and valuable business information are more vulnerable due to reduced levels of security. Hackers often target these addresses for their lenient encryption and privacy policies. Meanwhile, branded email addresses provide greater security for businesses by keeping data safe from unauthorized users.
How to get a branded email address
Follow these steps to get a branded email address:
1. Get a web hosting account.
It’s crucial for small business owners to set up a business website. First, purchase a domain name — this is your website’s address on the internet. Next, decide on a web hosting service. There are many available — including Bluehost, WordPress and InMotion Hosting — so pick one that suits your business needs best. These services offer different plans, so take your time to consider all of your choices.
Here are some tips for choosing your website address:
- Use “.com.”
- Keep the name short and easy to remember.
- Avoid hyphens and numbers.
- Use keywords or your location in the name to make it stand out.
Web hosting services allow you to make your email addresses through their system, and each one has different steps involved in creating an email address. Some hosting plans even come with free email addresses.
When you’re choosing a hosting platform, reliability is important. Without a reliable hosting service, your employees may encounter issues that prevent them from supporting your customers, which will hurt your business.
“Your business is your livelihood, and your ability to win and maintain clients depends a great deal on communication,” Whiteman said. “If there is a problem with your email that requires a host’s attention, you need to know you can get ahold of them and that their response will be timely.”
2. Select a naming convention.
As your business grows, you’ll want to provide your employees with business email addresses to promote a sense of cohesion and to keep their work emails separate from their personal ones. Once you’ve learned how to create email addresses with your web hosting service, it’s important to decide on a naming convention for your employees’ email addresses.
Some examples of naming conventions are firstname@yourbusiness.com, firstname.lastname@yourbusiness.com, firstinitiallastname@yourbusiness.com and lastname.firstname@yourbusiness.com. Once you determine the naming convention for your email addresses, it will be easier for clients and customers to contact you and your employees.
3. Choose and set up your email client.
Although you can create a branded email address through your web hosting account, the functionality behind the email address comes through an email client. Some famous examples are Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird and Gmail, all of which allow you to write, receive and organize emails.
When you’re determining which email client to use, consider your personal preferences and the tools you currently use. You’ll want to ensure that the email platform can integrate seamlessly with your workflow, rather than working against it.
“Entrepreneurs should choose the branded email address that they are most likely to check regularly, even if it costs a few more dollars per month than alternatives,” said Marianne Zabel, owner of StoryHeart Media. “If it is a hassle to check the email … you’ll probably check it less and miss out on important leads and customer communications.”
Miranda Fraraccio and Amelia Willson contributed to this article.
