Jason Stevens

Personal and Professional Marketing Network

Use an Email Address With Your Own Domain

Below is an interesting article that came across twitter earlier today.  This blog discusses the importance of having an email address with your own domain name.  Personally I have used Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and in the stone-age Myownemail to send and receive messages until recently.  Setting up your own email address with your own domain is simple with the little help from friends or search engines and looks much better on a Resume!  The best part is you do not have to have yet another mailbox to look after, you can use Gmail with a personal email address.  Gone are the days of advertising for someone else every time an email is sent, now your messages can reinforce your brand.

Here is how to change your settings in Gmail <Click the Gear icon<Settings<Accounts and Imports<Send Mail as.

 

7 Reasons to Use an Email Address With Your Own Domain Name

 

December 10, 2011

By William P. Kelly

Don’t let your old email habits get in the way of some great free advertising, brand reinforcement and better organization.

With so many different options out there for free email addresses, very often I see website owners forgo making emails from their own domain name. Relying on free email accounts from services such as Gmail and Yahoo! is, I think, a huge mistake.

 

1. With any good hosting company, making an email address takes about 60 seconds and costs you nothing extra. Tack on another 60 seconds to hook the new email up to something like Outlook or forward to an existing account and you’ve got a whopping 2 minutes invested to create a fully functioning email address.

NOTE: Even if you can get relatively inexpensive email-only service from places like Go Daddy, getting full budget Web hosting (jasonestevens.com uses DreamHost ) is not only usually cheaper, you get everything (Web hosting, WordPress blogs, unlimited email accounts, etc.).

2. Every email you send advertises somebody’s website. Think about it. Every time you give someone your email or advertise your email address or send an email, you are advertising that domain. If you use a free email account from someone like Yahoo!, you are advertising Yahoo! and not your own stuff. Don’t do that. Advertise your own stuff.

3. Going hand in hand with #2, it reinforces your brand. Constant reminders of your domain name to your current users, fans and customers are critical for your overall brand reinforcement.

4. It is simply more professional. It is so easy to make emails for a domain, that when I see a small business or ecommerce website that still uses an off-domain free email address, it makes me pause for a second. First, I think they must be so amazingly lazy that I probably don’t want to do business with them. Second, I think that maybe they are just really new and have not yet have a chance to make a few email addresses and, again, I probably don’t want to do business with them. Third, I think it seems a little shady… but that might just be me.

5. You control the email address and the content. If you have employees or volunteers or helpers for your business or website, under no circumstances should you ever allow them to use their personal email addresses. This is a powder keg waiting to explode. Again, with any good hosting company you can make an unlimited number of email accounts for no additional charge in no time at all. There is no reason not to create email accounts for employees. See points number 2 and 4 again with employees in mind.

6. Organization gets easier. Creating several emails for different purposes can really streamline communication flow and email organization. Make one email account for new inquiries, another for customer support and another for your weekly newsletter. This type of divide and conquer approach can really cut down on the manpower required for email triage on a daily basis.

7. You don’t have to give up your current email address. The biggest gripe I hear about this approach is people are afraid I’m asking them to give up the email address they have had for years. I’m not. It is a simple thing to either add the new email account alongside the old one in a system like Outlook. Another tactic is to forward the old email to the new.

Don’t let your old email habits get in the way of some great free advertising, brand reinforcement and better organization. Go ahead, take a few minutes and make those new domain specific email accounts. You’ll be glad you did.

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New Rules of Marketing & PR

As I continue to read The New Rules of Marketing & PR, my eyes continue to open at how important communicating with your audience is both from a  content standpoint as well as frequency.  A few of the new rules of Marketing & PR that Mr. Scott points out are consistent with the book I read last week (The Zen of Social Media) and they are as follows:

  • Marketing is more than just advertising
  • PR is for more than just a mainstream audience (think about your niche market!)
  • You are what you publish
  • People want authenticity, not spin
  • People want participation, not propaganda

Point three has really begun to resonate with my own personal life as indicated by this website itself.  It is important from a Marketing standpoint to understand your niche markets and to monitor the blogs/forums where these consumers are.  Those companies that dive in and offer assistance using these mediums (when appropriate) are seen as more credible where as those who fail and or ignore this communication can find themselves in trouble.  Furthermore, you are what you publish-is your company publishing fresh and relevant content or are you simply copying and pasting information?  It is imperative you take the time out to offer some value to your consumers with out expecting anything in return.  If you are too busy to add fresh content there are websites that offer blog services, here is an intersting article detailing such services that RINF mentions in their blog: Click here.   If your consumers become educated on your products/services/company via the content you are “publishing” this can help turn them into customers!  Remember, what is the point of publishing content on a social media website if you prohibit comments (e.g. participation), encourage participation!

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Welcome!

Welcome to jasonestevens.com, the intention of this site is to interact/connect  with other business and marketing professionals.  My blogs will focus on marketing books that either I have read or currently reading, interersting marketing websites to check out or possibly random knowledge that I recently obtained.  I encourage anyone and everyone to leave a comment, a recommendation for a book to read, a website recommendation or anything you feel will add value to someone else’s life.

I have talked about starting a website for nearly a year now and finally decided to take a leap of faith this weekend and get the ball rolling.  I have several friends, one in particular (Barry Crouch) who have websites and have been encouraging me to setup my own.  After completing grad school on December 18, 2011, I have undertaken the task of searching for my next career (ideally global marketing).  During the search, I decided to keep sharping my saw and rent marketing books to read/study from our local library (the library is a great resource, future blog).  One of the books that I read last week was “The Zen of Social Media Marketing” by Shama Hyder Kabani.  In this book it stresses the importance of social media, this book coupled with encouraging friends brings us here today.

I recommend reading ”The Zen of Social Media Marketing,” it is a fast read,  packed full of relevant social media information for someone who is not familiar with this platform and it provides verteran’s with a good refresher.  I look forward to everyone’s recommendations   Let’s Connect!

 

-Jason

 

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