Professional E-mail
Whether anyone likes to admit it or not, your e-mail address can create a good or bad impression right away. First impressions are everything and a professional e-mail address should be first on the list of items needed to operate a business. Not all e-mail services are equal when it comes to conveying a professional image. Many of the services you're familiar with-dial-ups such as America Online, NetZero, and Juno, and e-mail options like Yahoo! and Hotmail-are fine for communicating with friends and family. But these services are less effective for business use, and they are notorious for lost e-mails and difficulties with attachments. Also, if you are using a popular free e-mail service, keep in mind that everyone recognizes Yahoo and Hotmail as "free" - this also makes a statement about you. The point is, you're a legitimate business and you may be coming off as unprofessional - or at least a novice. Why? Because the free e-mail address you've chosen doesn't reflect and underscore your business credentials. If you are serious about being a professional, you should invest the relatively modest fee to get a professional e-mail address.
A professional e-mail address is an easy to remember point of contact, your profession identity, wherever you may be in your career or stage of life. Unlike other email systems, you can include your title or business identity into your email address, making it easier for people to identify who you are and what you do. A professional e-mail address shows you are serious about your profession and will always be contactable at a moment's notice. The shorter the e-mail address, the better. You want people to be able to intelligently guess your e-mail address if they wrote it down wrong or have misplaced it.
It's important to own an e-mail address that you control personally. If you don't, and publish the address in your marketing materials, you'll face substantial disruption and loss of brand identity if you later change ISPs.
IDentityStation recomends you own your own domain and professional e-mail addresses. In addition; because e-mails, files, contacts, and calendars have become crucial to the day-to-day operation of all businesses, we include full free access to professional electronic business management tools. Once your name is registered, you own your domain, no strings attached, no contracts.
There's no need to settle for consumer-level tools when it comes to communicating with clients and prospects. You're a professional; use the appropriate tools to operate as one in the electronic arena. Make your e-mail address part of your image.