How to Create a Professional Email Address

Why are email addresses important?

Having a professional email address for your business is important for many reasons, such as:

• Makes a good first impression: First impressions mean everything when it comes to a business. And often, the first thing a potential customer will see about your business is your email address. So, having a good professional email address is crucial to set things off on the right foot and make a good first impression.
• Establishes your brand: It’s important to establish your brand because it helps people identify your company’s mission. Your email address is connected with your business and is a direct reflection of your brand. If you don’t have your own email address, there’s no way a customer would be able to identify your company.
• Creates trustworthiness: Emailing is most likely going to be your main form of communication for your business, so you need your customers to be able to trust you. This is also why it’s important that your email address contains the name of your business in it. You’re going to be communicating back and forth with your clients and customers, so you need to have a credible email address that they can trust.
• Offers flexibility: If you have multiple departments in your business, you need to have multiple email addresses. For example, if someone wants to get in contact with the HR department, they’ll email HR@domain. This ensures that the email will get to the specific person it’s directed for in a timely fashion, which will also help to increase productivity in your company.
• Improves organization: Having an email address is also just an easy and effective way to organize your company. With an email address, you can keep track of all the emails you send and receive, and who they’re going to/coming from. Organization is key when it comes to running a business, and having a professional email address can help you do exactly that.

Business email ideas

So, you know what a professional email is and why email addresses are useful. But now comes the important part: choosing an email address for your business. Choosing a professional email address can be hard, so to help you out, we’ve provided you with some business email name ideas that you can use for inspiration:

• First name + last name: When in doubt, using your first name and last name is always a solid idea when it comes to an email address. This won’t work for all businesses, especially ones with multiple employees, but it's a good option for entrepreneurs who use their name for their business. A pro of this type of email address is that it’s easy to remember, but a con is that it won’t work if you anticipate your business to grow at any point.
• Shorten the name: Whether you use your name or your business’s name, another good idea for a professional email address is to include a shortened version of the name. This is a good idea if your business’s full name is too long to include in an email address. However, shortening the name can also get confusing and people might be more likely to make typos.
• Your name + location: Another email address example is to include your name and location. This is a good idea if your business has multiple locations and you need a way to differentiate between them. For example, if you have an office in New York City and an office in LA, one email can be smith.losangeles@domain and another can be smith.newyorkcity@domain. However, this type of email format can get confusing if you or an employee transfers to a different location.
• Your name + department: If your business has a lot of different apartments, a good way to differentiate between them is to combine the employee’s name with their department. For instance, someone who works in HR will be smith.HR@domain, and someone who works in accounting will be smith.accounting@domain. This type of email format works great if an employee sticks with their department, but it can get tricky when someone changes their job title and needs to get a new email.

Regardless of the email name that you choose, it’s important that your email address is memorable and simple. Anything too long or complicated is going to be easy to forget and difficult to type out. Your email address should also be easily pronounceable and trustworthy so that your customers can feel confident and comfortable emailing you.

Your email address should be something that reflects your business in a straightforward way. Whether you use your name + location or your name + department, as long as your email address is simple and memorable, you should be good to go.

Custom vs free domain

There are a lot of benefits of having a custom domain for your business rather than a free one. When you use a free domain for your email, there are various free email address limitations. Free email domains do not have great deliverability rates and your emails are more likely to be mistaken as spam, which is especially not ideal when it comes to email marketing.

However, when you have a custom email address, it’ll be a lot easier for people to get in contact with you. A custom email address will also improve credibility for your business because it makes you seem more official than if you used a free domain. With a custom email, you can also customize it however you like and have it reflect your personal brand.

If you create your own email address, make sure to verify your email domain before you send any emails. This will help prevent your emails from getting flagged as junk and ending up in the spam folder.

Does it really matter?

While it might seem like an easier option to just use a free domain, going the extra mile and creating a custom domain will actually make a huge difference for your business. Having a custom domain improves your brand visibility so it’s easy for customers to contact you, makes your business seem more professional, and boosts the trustworthiness of your company. No one wants to write to an email address that looks like a scam. A custom email address will make your business seem more legitimate, which can help to attract more customers.

Your email address makes an impression

Having a good email address can make or break your business, which is why it’s crucial that you know how to create a professional email that reflects your brand. And if you need some help with creating a professional email, just check out Mailchimp.

Mailchimp is an industry leader in email marketing platforms and gives you access to an assortment of free email marketing tools that you can use with the click of a button. With Mailchimp, you can get help with everything from writing compelling subject lines to boost sales for your business to creating landing pages that’ll grow your audience. At Mailchimp, we’re here to increase visibility for your business so you can drive traffic and increase sales.

Whether you’re struggling with email marketing or e-commerce, we have everything you need to help get your business back on track. Sign up to use Mailchimp today and see for yourself all the ways we can change your business for the better.