There’s a growing need for businesses of all kinds and sizes to have professional email addresses, as most people prefer emailing over having a phone conversation. Now more than ever before, it is more important than ever for small businesses to have professional email addresses, as emailing has become the most important means of communication between your business and customers.

As a small business looking for ways to grow without breaking the bank, having a free business email may seem like a good idea; however, it is time you took your business to a professional level with a professional email address.

What is a Professional Email Address?

A business email address is considered professional if it is based on a custom business domain and is used for business communications only. In other words, a professional email address is one that includes your company name in the domain name, such as business@digitalsocius.com—this is an example of an email address that meets the criteria for a professional email address.

Only an email address that is associated with the custom domain name of your business can be referred to as a professional email for a business. Aside from that, having a simple, generic business email will not suffice as a professional email for your business.

Differences between Professional Emails and Generic Emails

Any email account that uses a free domain, such as yahoo.com, hotmail.com, gmail.com, etc., is deemed to be a generic email address. While a professional email address is one that has your registered business domain, such as peteopete@digitalsocius.com, as was mentioned in the preceding section.

A few differences between generic business email and professional email address:

• When compared to a generic account, a professional business account makes it much simpler for customers, partners, and institutions to recognize and validate your company’s legitimacy as a legal enterprise. Since anyone can create a generic email, there is a greater chance that scammers will be able to access your customers while your business uses a generic email.

• Anyone is able to set up a generic email account for themselves, and they can use it however they like. On the other hand, a professional email is generated from a corporate account, which is maintained and paid for by a business that requires the account to be used exclusively for business-related activities.

• Password and email security on a professional email account become stronger as they are maintained. This is understandable given that data and information are usually shared through this medium.

• A professional email address exudes more authority than a generic one. And this is really beneficial to your company’s growth.

• The business, not the employee, owns a professional email account. This facilitates the smooth transfer of data from one person to the next, especially if an employee no longer works for your company.

PRO Email Addresses Format

The email has become an integral part of daily life, so it’s crucial that your work emails be used exclusively for business-related communications. There are some acceptable formats for your business email address, which include:

☆ first name + domain.com (e.g pete@digitalsocius.com) – This structure works well for small businesses and teams with a few members. But as your business expands and new people join the team, conflicts will arise (especially among those who interact directly with customers) because multiple people will likely share the same first name.

☆ first name + second name + domain.com (e.g pete.grace@digitalsocius.com) – For businesses of any size, this is ideal. Since it’s quite unlikely that two employees will share the same first name and last name, this format simplifies the task of identifying people with the same first name. Including both your first and last name in your professional email address is a great move.

☆ first name + surname initial + domain.com (e.g pete.g@digitalsocius.com) – This is nearly identical to the second format, with the exception that the second name initial is used instead of the whole name.

6 Reasons your Business Needs Professional Email

Increased brand awareness and visibility for your business

The more people who encounter your company’s brand, even digitally, the better. A business email is just as effective as word-of-mouth advertising. You’re missing out on a great chance to spread awareness of your business and promote your brand if you don’t use a professional email address that contains your company name.

It Increases the Credibility of your Marketing

Marketing content made with a professional email makes work easier for your marketing and sales department, which in turn makes your marketing more credible. Professional emails from your business are more likely to be considered or opened by your prospects and leads, whereas marketing emails from a free generic email domain stand a greater chance of being flagged as junk or even blocked as spam.

Helps your Business  in staying on track

Helps your organization to maintain its forward momentum If you use the same provider for both your personal and business accounts, keeping track of all of your communications while using a generic account can quickly become hard. This is especially true when using the same service for both accounts. It’s possible that customer emails, along with your personal and professional emails, could get mixed up, causing you to miss important messages.

It Protects your Business data from Threats

When compared to professional business emails, generic email addresses are significantly more likely to be hacked into and harassed by online scammers. If you use a professional email account to run your business, you can be sure that the information about your customers will stay safe, private, and free from threats.

Makes it Easier for Customers to Address the Necessary Departments

Your small business can have separate email addresses for each of its departments, such as marketing@digitalsocis.com, sales@digitalsocius.com, and so on. This way, it makes it easy for customers to address specific departments for needed information and assistance. The fact that your organization has separate business emails for each of its departments gives the impression that your company is much larger than it actually is.

It Helps your Staff Stay More Organized

A professional email account for your employees enables you to create a clear protocol for distributing and removing email addresses as people join and exit your business. This allows you to control the use of your company’s resources while also protecting sensitive data.

Hosted business addresses make utilizing apps such as calendar software a breeze, making it simple for your company to become more organized. An organized business fosters a positive work environment for your employees.

Email PRO Formats 

In moving your business email from the generic state to being professional, you use this simple guide:

• Use the right domain – Your journey to a world of professionalism with professional business email begins with choosing the right domain name for your business.

• Keep your domain name short and simple – Since other characters will be added to your domain name in order to create your business email, it’s important to choose a name that is short and easy to remember with domain extensions like.com ,.org, etc.

• Avoid using numbers or symbols for your business email – Avoid using punctuation marks, emojis, and other non-alphabetic characters in business emails. Use only alphabetic forms for names, not numerals.

• Avoid prefixes that don’t make your email look professional e.g coolpete@digitalsocius.com

• Have emails for different departments of your business – It’s possible that your small business may not need so many business emails. However, as your business expands and your team size increases, you will recognize the importance of having many business emails.

Conclusion

Having a professional business email for your business makes it much easier to stay in touch with your customers. Boost your business with a professional email account with the appropriate domain account, such as Zoho Mail which you can access for N1,040, or Google Workspace which starts from N3,000 per month for one user, and use it to not only communicate professionally with your customers but also to develop major branding for your business. As a result, you will be separated from your competition.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of professional email and are unsure where to begin, contact us to help you set up Zoho mail or Google business email for your business.