What's in an Email Address?

How important is a good email address to your organization? Obviously, the email service must be reliable and provide relatively good junk filters. But for some reason many people don’t consider a “good” email address as being branded to their organization’s web presence. This means saying goodbye to AOL, Earthlink, Comcast, so on and so forth. If you’re the Smith Agency and you have www.smithagency.com, then why are you still using smithagencyrules@aol.com? Not only are you giving AOL some free advertising, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. There is a certain element of professionalism involved with email. For example, if you see two email addresses – smithagencyrules@aol.com and john.smith@smithagency.com – which of the two firms are you going to think is bigger, better, and knows what they’re doing? So dump AOL, Comcast, or whatever it is you’re using and brand your email address with your organization. If you’re worried about not receiving email sent to your old AOL address, this is a simple mail forwarding matter – much like how the postal system handles forwarding. Don’t use little technical issues as an excuse – and don’t continue sending unbranded, unprofessional email!