Corporate Emails Boost Credibility of Startup

Email is an important corporate identification, as such your business email should reflect your brand, and not that of another company. There are many reasons why free email accounts are disadvantageous and should not be used, especially, for business email addresses. Availability of fund is an essential consideration for establishing a business, as such, entrepreneurs who do not have sufficient startup capital, are often left with no choice but to use free email services.

Cost is a major factor that forces many small business owners to fall into the temptation of subscribing to free email services, instead of registering for a paid domain name email account, which they often consider as a way to save cost. These startups fail to realize the implication of their actions. It is understandable if an individual decided to use free email account as a main email address or an alternate email, but such email must not be for business purposes. Some of the popular email services that startups subscribe to include Gmail, Yahoo and AOL.

Some of the reasons free email accounts are disadvantageous and unacceptable for use by companies as business email addresses are as follows:

1.   Free email accounts are meant for personal use:

When registering a new email account with any of the email service providers, one of the mandatory fields you are required to fill are the date of birth and gender fields. These fields clearly point to the fact that it is not meant for use as business email address.

2.  Free emails are unaccepted for Email Marketing:

Often, it is unacceptable to use email accounts that are free for email marketing campaigns by most email marketing software applications. Domain name email addresses are best for email marketing campaigns.

3.  Attracts Unsolicited Advertisement:

The terms and conditions for owning a free email account is because the service providers reserve the right to place advertisement on your account. These unsolicited advertisements could sometimes be quite annoying, and that is the reason for Ads Blocker software.

4.  Free Email Accounts are Associated with Scam:

Free email addresses are often associated with ‘scam’ mails. The Yahoo email is particularly notorious for being used by ‘scammers,’ especially in parts of Africa. In Nigeria scammers are tagged as 419 reference to a section of the countries criminal code and they are also referred to as Yahoo boys.

5.  Free email accounts lack credibility and are untrusted:

The business community does not regard as important emails sent through free accounts. This lack of trust also limits the scope of the kind of transaction that could be executed with free email accounts to small contracts. Large transactions are often cancelled, because companies using such email accounts are seen as untrustworthy.

Registering a domain name email address is not expensive. Some domain registrants offer free domain name emails when you subscribe to their hosting services. Domain service providers such as GoDaddy, 1+1, Register.com and others offer email domains for as low as $12 per month. It is very important that as a new business startup, you endeavour to register a formal email account with your trade mark. That way, every email that you send out to your customers bears your hallmark, which in itself is a free form of advertisement.

Registering a domain email comes with some advantages and the advantages of owning a corporate domain name far out weights the free email account option. It also provides the opportunity of being used subsequently as the domain name for your website whenever the time is ripe. Many new business owners who cannot afford setting up a website at the beginning, first subscribe to a domain email account using their corporate hallmark, which is eventually becomes their website address.

Business is all about credibility, and owning a domain email account is one of fastest ways to build credibility. Therefore, it is very important that from the unset, you start on your best foot by ensuring that the email address of your business is reflective of your brand image.