These days, email has become the way a lot of business is done, yet many small companies are forfeiting the advantage that having their own domain and email address (info@yourbusiness.com rather than yourcompany@bigpond.com or worse, yourcompany@hotmail.com) brings to the table.  I always know when I’m dealing with a company with an email address of yourcompany@bigpond.com that it’s a probably 1-man band or that they simply haven’t been able to harness technology effectively yet.  Perhaps they will in the future, but in the meantime I have doubts about doing business with them that have nothing to do with their expertise in their field, which may be first class!

Here are some of the advantages that having email under your own domain brings:

1.  Better Spam control

Despite having many email addresses, I get well under 10 spams a week from our many email addresses combined.  If you are suffering from Spam overload, talk to us; our experienced team has a variety of solutions and our default email system has most of them included!

We have solved spam problems for many companies through a variety of solutions, some of which are surprisingly simple.  As just one quick example, there are times when a change of email solves spam problems completely, other times simply not publishing your main email address on your website where the baddies can “harvest” it and add it to their lists is enough.

2.  Convey a professional appearance

Having your own domain conveys a sense of professionalism and seriousness about your business right off the bat.  Wouldn’t you prefer to do business with a company that is committed to itself?  Remember first impressions can be very important in business, and an email address mentioning hotmail, yahoo or bigpond conveys a definite impression of being a one person company. (Note that this doesn’t apply as much to gmail which is often used by professionals even in large companies)

While none of us want to project a false impression that our companies are much larger than they are, projecting the impression that you are smaller than you are is just as false and doesn’t serve you or your customers well.

3.  Be independent from your ISP

Internet offerings change all the time and sometimes your old ISP will not be available in a new area after you move.  As the NBN (National Broadband Network) rolls out it’s likely that there will be a lot more turmoil in internet companies and many will simply not make it through the transition.  Sometimes a company that used to be great value can struggle to provide good customer service as time goes on, and sometimes their network can age and start giving problems.  With your own domain, you’re completely independent of your ISP; of course, you’ll use your internet connection to read your email but you won’t be tied to them any more.

4.  You can control where your email goes much better

Of course, once you have your own domain you can have multiple easy-to-remember addresses under it, such as “sales” and :”support”.  However there are other options built into our standard email system – the ability to have an email go to one address but end up in several staff mailboxes, or redirect to an external email service such as gmail for future searchability and storage, or be sent into a “trouble ticket” management system; and there are many other options.  Talk to our friendly staff; we’re happy to offer 15 minutes of expert consultancy at no charge during February and March this year.

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