This blog is about the importance of having a unique domain name for your business and the reasons why are crucial.
Of course, like most things, this is a question that depends on who you are and what business you are in. So if you are a consultant, entrepreneur, small business owner, blogger, or podcaster, read on to get some unique perspectives.
What would you rather have, a personal email address or a custom domain? This is because your customers will respond better to an email from yourcompany.com than one from johnsmith@gmail.com. YourBrandName.Com is more recognizable and way more trustworthy than the common man or woman’s Gmail! This blog post lists 11 benefits for using your domain name for sending email and shares the opinion of many other people around this important topic.
Why NOT?
The reason is that you’re missing out on 11 benefits of using a domain name to send an email. I’m going to share those with you in this blog post. Let’s get started!
Being serious about starting your own business means taking the time to set up an email address with your own web URL/domain. Then, you can start building an online identity for yourself right away to be taken seriously by potential clients.
Contents
- 11 Reasons To Use Your Own Domain Name
- Reasons You Don’t Want To Use Free Gmail Or Hotmail For Business!
- This Article Will Explain In More Detail The Reasons Why You Need A Private Email Address!
- You Build Trust And Credibility With Your Own Domain Name
- You Need More Than Just An Email Address
- Many successful businesses have started with Hotmail accounts
- You Could Get A Customised Sign Made With Your Web URL/Domain
- 9 Reasons You Don’t Want To Use Free Gmail Or Hotmail For Business!
11 Reasons To Use Your Own Domain Name
Reason 1: Your email address is your identity – how you present yourself to the world will set how others do business with you. Suppose you are serious about running a business and taking it seriously. In that case, you want people to do business with you. Your domain name can is a branding tool and customer recognition device with your email address.
Reason 2: You can use it to show you can afford to spend money on your marketing. This usually means you have a good business, so people feel better about doing business with you.
Reason 3: You can make it easy for people to find your website. you might have a killer business idea, but if it is not easy for people, they will never be able to find you.
Reason 4: It will help give you an identity online. People want to know who they are doing business with before starting a new relationship and may look you up from Linkedin, so it benefits you to set up your domain you can control.
Reason 5: It takes just a few minutes to set up, and if you are serious about your business, it is worth every minute.
Reason 6: It will save money in the long run as you won’t have to spend money on buying products from Hotmail or Gmail adverts or get distracted.
Reason 7: You can lose track of emails going through Hotmail or Gmail. I had Hotmail before and did not know how many spam Hotmails I received each day until I had my own domain name when all Hotmails landed in my inbox after forwarding.
Reason 8: You get more respect online from people who visit your website. Assuming you are serious, they may even link back to your website, helping you improve your ranking on search engines like google.com, which adds value.
Reason 9: If we were to meet for business purposes, for example, in an exhibition trade show situation, I would treat someone with their website, phone number and Hotmail or Gmail domain just as no more important than someone who has none of these things. Sadly it happens every day as first impressions count.
Reason 10: Many features come with a domain like unlimited storage space, spam protection, and more.
Reason 11: It gives Google more information about your site, which helps you rank it higher in search results. Having an email address from your domain increases credibility and trustworthiness when sending emails out to clients or customers.
So the process I follow is to MyWebTonet.Com and buy your domain name and then build a Website, then work out how to use G-Suite for your email using this link. This is the best approach as it secures my calendar and my email for the minimum cost. Thanks to the kind folks at Google, you can grab a 14-day free trial.
Reasons You Don’t Want To Use Free Gmail Or Hotmail For Business!
Email Hosting
Does Using A Gmail Or Hotmail Address Lose You Money?
Of course, like most things, this is a question that depends on who you are and what business you are in. If you are a consultant, entrepreneur, small business owner or blogger, the answer is, on most occasions, yes, it could cost you a lot!
Imagine you were in the shoes of the buyer of your product or services and when you met the person, they gave you a thin business card with no website and a Hotmail address. Would you take them seriously? Or think they were an amateur?
Perhaps this would be enough to convince you they could not help you with a problem keeping you awake at night?
This Article Will Explain In More Detail The Reasons Why You Need A Private Email Address!
I have saved over £5000 by building my websites and managing the mail system myself. Fortunately, an excellent friend of mine is very tech literate. But he became sick of me asking him dumb questions about how to do things with my website. So one of the best pieces of advice he gave me is that “Google is your friend!”
Whenever I have a problem with technology, I spend some time searching on Google or YouTube to find a solution. Usually, someone else has had the same problem, and they have written or posted a video on fixing it!
Don’t just take my word for it
I am in a technology journalist group on Facebook and noticed a conversation thread within the group. Including my one comment, there were over 27 comments, and I will share with you some of the reasons you need your domain name and personal email address.
You Build Trust And Credibility With Your Own Domain Name
In the thread, someone posted “What is hotmail.com?” and there was a long conversation explaining that hotmail.com was a Hotmail email, I thought it might be helpful to write a blog post about Hotmail email and why you want your address if you are using Hotmail or Gmail for business.
You Need More Than Just An Email Address
It is becoming increasingly important to have your domain name with your company name on it. However, having your personal mail server, Hotmail/Gmail/Yahoo does not make any difference. These emails do not look professional at all! The reason why? They don’t even require you to include your private email address in the web URL when people look at your email, which looks spammy and cheap.
Note the Hotmail email address is not even used in the web URL. That screams unprofessionalism! No one will want to do business with someone who uses Hotmail/Gmail for their business. For example, if you are a consultant and your private email address was john@gmail.com or john@yahoo.co.uk, they will associate Gmail or yahoo with amateur quality because these addresses scream cheap and unprofessional!
Even worse, if you were an entrepreneur consulting on choosing the best company name for your startup, why would you go for something already so widely known to look unprofessional? If you don’t know already about google / Hotmail complaints, hotmail.com addresses and Hotmail scams to give a few examples of what I mean!
Many successful businesses have started with Hotmail accounts
Hotmail, gmails, yahoos etc. are exemplary in their place, but any serious company will need its domain name and personal email address!
How about this for an idea?
You Could Get A Customised Sign Made With Your Web URL/Domain
Using Hotmail or Gmail for business was discussed in the Facebook group I am in, and a question was asked by a freelance PR consultant called Laura. Laura posted a comment in a Facebook group that confirms why you need to have a unique website address to make your business more successful than one that doesn’t have its own web URL/domain.
Would you please take your time to read the comments from the journalists with their opinions?
Laura: “Can I ask a question? I’m a freelance PR and use a Hotmail account and was wondering if this makes a difference when sending pitches by email as I haven’t had a single reply to an email pitch for the past 4 weeks. My stories aren’t that bad, I have good reputable clients and interesting, relevant stories. I don’t spam people, and I make sure that everything is individual and relevant. I also don’t ask how people are all the time. Do you tend to avoid us, freelancers, with such email accounts, preferring to only use stuff from agencies? Just out of curiosity, thanks”
- Richard : “I’m afraid, yes, it looks super-unprofessional. Even a Gmail address looks a bit Invest in a proper domain and I’m sure you’ll see better results”
- Lance : “Use a service like this to get set up with a proper email address – it’s not expensive : www.”
- Zara: “I often use my personal Gmail as it goes back years – as well as using company email addresses. Gmail works fine for me; interested to hear the response on this.”
- Santo: “Gmail seems to be viewed as better than Hotmail. However, our purchasing dept will not accept webmail addresses from would-be-suppliers, the email addresses MUST have a ‘proper’ domain such as them@theirbusiness.com – without this, they won’t even consider a new supplier request.”
- Mick: “I would invest in a domain. Most come with some email accounts included. It should really improve your response rate.”
- Matt: “Agree with the above. Buy something like laura@yourdomain.co.uk…….(its available) and get it to forward to your Hotmail”
- James: “Hi Laura – if your email simply says from @comon it then it likely looks a bit weak. As people have said – get a domain, even if it isLWConsulting.com and then open up a Google Apps for Business account for £3.30 a month(https://apps.google.com/)….
- Tim: “I have no trouble with freelancers at all, but I’m far more likely to reply to a branded email address than a free one like Hotmail, Outlook, or GMail. Get a domain and sign up for Gmail or Outlook (if you prefer the Hotmail interface) – they are like £4/mo”
- Adam: “Over the last ten years, I’ve used a Gmail address alongside various client-supplied email accounts depending on the client that I am working with and generally there is no discernible difference between response rate – and that applies to contacting large multi-national customer communications departments, as well as journalists. I assume that you are not just relying on email pitches though? How are you getting on when you phone up (a well researched) journalist?I currently have 4 separate client accounts, so it looks like I am simply a member of the client team, but for smaller accounts, I still use the Gmail.”
- Adam Continued: “Having said all of the above, the comments received so far might make me think again about sorting out my own domain…”
- Dan: “Hotmail’s so synonymous with viruses and people asking for help extraditing a cash from some far-flung state that I’d dismiss any message from a @comdomain without even reading. Sorry”
- Allan: “And that means your email may not even make it through some corporate spam filters, especially if the content also contains trigger words.”
- Deborah: “Interested to read these replies. I had used a Gmail account I have had for years, and decided to open a Google for Business account a few months ago. I don’t think it has made a real difference in terms of response to pitches, but it has separated my professional and personal life. It probably appears to be more business-like”
- Fabio: “Agree with the above. Get a domain”
- Caroline: “Personally, I don’t find this stuff matters. I have decent relationships with journos who don’t seem to mind which contact methodology. I use Gmail however, Hotmail remains a little wild west from a perception pov. So maybe open a Gmail acc. Or, as the others suggest, if you’re not regularly using client-supplied email addys, Gmail biz acc a great option.”
- Helen: “I have used a custom domain ever since becoming a one-person PR agency, and would definitely recommend it. Also make sure that you reference your LinkedIn profile and Twitter handle at the foot of your emails so that editors can check you out (and hopefully be happy to connect with/follow you)”.
- Iain: “Feeling guilty about my prejudice bit Hotmail addresses aren’t taken seriously.”
- Simon: “I’ve worked with quite a few freelance journalists who have Hotmail or Gmail accounts – doesn’t seem to be a problem for them”
- Steve: “ the people who say they look at the story are missing the story. Corporates of all kinds – press or commerce – pay for spam filters. These use rules to decide what to chuck away and do not tell the senders that they have failed. Something coming from Hotmail, with no previous conversation history with the internal recipient, is *very* likely to go to the bit-bucket. In that situation, the editorial person wouldn’t even realise the message has been deleted, and wouldn’t get the chance, therefore, to magnanimously go by the content. they never see* the content.”
- Max: “The trouble with that theory is that Hotmail addresses do reach me, which is more than can be said for some corporate addresses. I check my spam box every week as so many legitimate emails end up there”
- Max cont: “Having just checked,I see that there’s a mail from Dennis Publishing in my spam folder. The days when the spam folder was for spam are long gone”
- Stephen: “In general I would rank AOL and Yahoo as lead “professional”, then Hotmail, then Gmail, then Macdotcom – but WAY better to have your own domain and so easy now. If you have a web site, you have email in almost all hosting outfits.”
- Becky: “Sorry, but I would always be more likely to read an email from a domain, also our spam filters would probably kick in before it got to me.”
- Ben: “I would tend to view with great suspicion any email from a free email account claiming to represent a brand. It costs peanuts to buy a domain and email forwarding, so why wouldn’t anyone do that?”
- Stuart: “I never notice the email address until I reply, to be honest. Could it be getting filtered into spam more often than other providers, maybe?”
- Andrew: “Would suggest it’s most likely being swallowed up by spam filtering. Agree with comments about getting a cheap personal domain/email address: for example ‘laurawelsh.online’ would cost you less than a tenner a year, and there are other variants going up to £50 or so. Add in email hosting for about a fiver a month or less, and you’re ”
- Annem: “I only (very late) made the switch to Gmail recently after I noticed my Hotmail was annoyingly being filtered into spam. Comments on here are very helpful!”
- Danny: “Gmail and Hotmail accounts make me think “indie PR’, and I know many good indie PR execs who cut their teeth in agencies and in-house. I’ve also had soul destroyingly bad pitches from juniors at large agencies. Domains mean nothing to me. Only the content. matters.”
- I would check with a couple of peeps to see if your mail is hitting their spam folders. Mail me at dan*********** and I will let you know if I see it come in.
- Evan: “I pretty much ignore every free email accounts like Gmail and Hotmail. It seems too unprofessional for me even though I’m sure you’re not. If tiny crowd-funded guys and one-man app developers can have a domain then prs should too. It also gives me an indication that you’re probably not a chancer or spammer.”
9 Reasons You Don’t Want To Use Free Gmail Or Hotmail For Business!
Thinking about this from a client or new clients’ perspective, there are a few points that spring to mind:
- You are viewed as an amateur if you have a free address
- Spam filters the mail gets deleted on arrival worst-case scenario
- Spam folders (content may arrive too late for the job if at all)
- Purchasing departments will not accept new suppliers with free email accounts
- More likely to get a response from a branded email address
- Separate your personal life from your business world
- Scared to open Hotmail etc. as may contain a virus
- Seen as not caring about looking professional
- Lower response rate for non-branded email addresses
I have been using my own domain name and managing my websites over the past few years; I am not a tech-savvy individual by any means, so I regularly learn from online resources how to do things.
I have been learning how to manage my blog for the last few years, buying my domain name many years ago www.natschooler.com, I also run my email and host that with G-suite.
This gives me peace of mind to manage my own website and email personally and look after it myself. Especially using such an established and trusted name in the industry, established in 1996 and scoring over 9.8 out of 10 on trust pilot, gives me peace of mind.
I spend around £15 per month and have access to a few email addresses and host two websites. Although, ordinarily, this would cost me in the region of £1200 per year if I hired a company to do this for me, it gives me more money to invest in my own marketing and social media tools to generate revenue for my consulting and coaching business.
Lots of small businesses and consultants spend around £50 per month on their websites. Usually, paying a teenager to do the work you think is problematic. They charge you an extra £100 every time you ask them to make a simple change to your website or add a new email address for your new team members.
MyWebTonet.com has the easiest control panel to manage the process of building a WordPress or any other website and to grab your details to add to utilise GSuite for your email hosting, it is better this way as it works with your calendar and Google Drive.
I can not only install a WordPress blog or a website with one click to any domain name I own once I am logged in. (A spotty teenager would charge £50-100)
Since I switched to GSuite, I have saved myself massive amounts of time and kept my inbox free from wasting junk mail, scheduling events, and integrating them with my calendar and business apps. Gmail vs Hotmail is not something to think about! The question should be what is your domain name going to be…
Most other hosting providers have a considerable amount of downtime. With websites, MyWebTonet.com I never have any problems except the ones I have caused myself.
I have had under an hour of downtime in the last four years in total. This was probably caused by me making a mistake with my website!
The emails have caused me no problems, being delivered in record time and my calendar syncs now with no effort with G-Suite.
If I had time to invest in thousands of domain names, I can host them at MyWebTonet.Com for free and redirect them to other domains if I have a hosting solution for one of them.
Step 1 Go to MyWebTonet.Com and buy your domain name and then build a Website, I also use the system to store pictures privately instead of paying Dropbox or Google to keep them, this is very simple if you have the slightest understanding of WordPress. (An open-source website and blogging solution over 30% of all websites are made with this)
Step 2 Work out how to use G-Suite for your email using this link. This is the best approach I have found as it secures my calendar and my email for the minimum cost. Thanks to the kind folks at Google, you can grab a 14-day free trial.
They are the cheapest domain names out there for value for money, and the web hosting is also really cheap and runs on the latest technology with the best data links to keep you secure and online with your business 24/7.
If you would like to set up your domain name, here is the link you need.
So the process is:
Step 1: to go to MyWebTonet.Com and buy your domain name and then build a Website, then work out how to use it.
Step 2: You can have a 14 day free trial with G-Suite here for your email using this link. This is the best approach I have found as it secures my calendar and my email for the minimum cost.
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The Ultimate Guide To Personal Branding To Win