Monday, November 19, 2007

What does your email address say about you?

As a professional, don't underestimate the importance of a professional email address. Think about it from your clients' and prospects' point of view. If you were looking for a someone to help you get you unstuck in your life or business, which of the following would you contact first:

1. 2cute4U@hotmail.com

2. Kendra456@aol.com

3. KendraThompson@reachyourgoals.com

Your email address is part of your professional identity. Make sure it reflects the image you want to project.

AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo mail, and gmail are not professional email addresses. They announce to the world that you don't take your business very seriously.

Instead, get set up with an email address associated with your website or domain name. It will cost you less than $10/year to register your own unique domain name, e.g. nameofyourbusiness.com.

Even if you don't have a website, you can still use the email address associated with your domain name - e.g., John@nameofyourbusiness.com. If you register your domain name at GoDaddy, they offer live phone support in case you need help setting up your email.

Once you have your email address set up, you can have it forwarded, if you wish, to your AOL or other email account. You can also set up your Outlook Express or other desktop mail program to send messages from your professional account.

Thus, while still using your familiar email interface, you can send and receive messages using your professional email address. Your recipients see only your professional email address.

Bonus hint: Make the most of the "From" line in the messages you send out. Check out the "From" field in your inbox. In the list of messages you'll see mainly people's names - sometimes first name only, sometimes first and last name. Do you see how they all kind of blend in with one another?

Here's a tip to make your messages stand out in other people's inboxes:

Go into the account setup of your email program. Find where you list your name in the From field. Insert a space, hyphen and space just before your name. Save the change. Next time you send a message to someone, your name in the From field will be indented and will stand out from the rest.

Here's how mine looks:
- Dr. Pauline Wallin

Also, see below, in an earlier post, more tips on making the most of your emails.

2 comments:

  1. The indentation is an excellent idea to make an email From: name stand out. I'll begin using it immediately. Thanks for your work!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Marlene. You can also precede your name by a tilde, a couple of exclamation marks, arrow, or any other symbol (preferably not a question mark ;-) )

    ReplyDelete