Choose Your Email Address Well

because it affects how people see you

Email addresses are vitally important in business. Just as we would never have a business without phone numbers we now need email addresses.

How your email address is presented has an affect on how people perceive you and your business. So when choosing what your address will be please consider these tips:

Name

sales@purplepaperclips.com is not personal at all. Use your real name. perry@purplepaperclips.com is far more inviting for users than 'sales', 'info', 'accounts' etc. In the mind of a potential customer Perry is real person; "sales" is not a person but a concept.
If you think you really have a need for an address like sales@ then consider doing what a newspaper did and create a character who represents your business. "Rhonda" helped thousands of people place adverts over the years even tho she didn't actually exist.
When people receive an email that is addressed to them personally they are more likely to answer it. This is important because too many emails sent to businesses are never answered! Yes this is true. I recently read some stats that said that Australian businesses were not answering around 40% of inquiries within 7 days. This is throwing away money. "Sales" is not a person so no one feels responsible but Perry is a person and will be more likely to respond when his name is called.
Have an email for each person who talks to the outside world. If they have to interact then let them do so just as you would let them use the phone. This works both ways as a customer would far rather email their questions to Janice in accounting than to a single catch-all account that everyone might (or might not) read. When Janice leaves the business you can simply redirect her mail to either Wendy (the new Janice) on wendy@... or your own account.
perry465@hotmail.com or sexypex@gmail.com should not be used for business. They make you look silly and about 12 years old (or a porn star).

@ Domain Name

Make sure your email addresses are all on your domain name. There are several reasons here:

perry@purplepaperclips.com has a far more professional feel than purplepaperclips@bigpond.com
perry@purplepaperclips.com is portable so if you get annoyed with your provider you don't lose your inbound emails - which would be like advertising that you had gone out of business when things start bouncing.
If people already know that you are www.purplepaperclips.com and you are Perry then the maths isn't too hard. This is much easier to remember than, "I know it's Perry but who does he use for his ISP again?"
Web email providers like hotmail, yahoo and gmail are great but they should be used with extreme care for your business unless you are running a very web oriented business. Even then think twice as you@yourdomain is always best.

Displaying your Email Address

A lot of businesses don't display their email addresses at all. I have to wonder at this. When asked some say that it is because they don't want to get spam email. Well fair enough no one really likes spam. Consider this though: we get spam phone calls but we would never consider having an unlisted or invisible business phone number. Show your email addresses and deal with spam with filters (just check your junk daily for the genuine emails that slip through) and by hitting the 'delete' button. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

Another trick that people use to hide their email addresses are Contact Us Forms. While forms have their uses, who really likes filling them in? Can you hear the chirp of crickets? That means no one honestly likes filling out forms so don't use them to hide your real email address. Let people choose if they use your form or DIY in their own email program.

Bottom line: make sure your email address is personal & professional AND put your email address on every business card, web site, advert and anywhere else you would put your phone number.

Hey guess what? Some people may want to buy from you. That would be nice wouldn't it?