Marketing Makeovers #1                                Your Email Account

I launched Leesburg Magazine with the goal of not just telling stories about Leesburg’s history and people, but also to serve as a platform for promoting businesses in Leesburg. In the promotion of a new Leesburg event I observed several marketing practices that are not conducive to growing a business. Those observations and my thoughts will be discussed in a series I call “Marketing Makeovers”.

                                             Your Email Account

It’s tough being a small business owner. You typically put in a 60 hour week, do everything necessary to keep most of the loose ends tied together; keep the shelves stocked, take the trash out, pay invoices, send invoices, cover when employees don’t show.  Your freedom to be your own boss comes at a price and that often means learning to do things large businesses have whole departments for.

Like IT. A big business has specialists who watch over their servers, their websites and email account.  You don’t, for better or worse, “you da man” (or woman) far too frequently when it comes to computer issues. Including setting up your email account.

Do you consider your email address as one of your most important marketing tools?

It is.

In preparing to promote the new event in Leesburg I set up an address book of about 100 small businesses. I was, how should I say, shocked at all of the business owners whose email address ended in “yahoo”, “gmail”, “verizon” or, the greatest offender of all, “aol”.

When I look at an email address I should immediately know what company it’s coming from and who wrote it. Every time you send me an email you should be reinforcing your brand and your reputation as the brand owner.

When I see an address like “jimk1957@aol.com” I have no immediate clue as to what company is represented.  I do wonder if “jimk1957” is serious about their business and it’s hard for me to remember what business they own when listed in my address book along with “jameskimball@gmail.com” and “jim.kennedy@verizon.net”.

None of these extensions reinforces your brand, which should be an objective each time you communicate with someone.

So how do I fix this problem?

You probably already have a company website and a person who maintains it for you. For example, you own “CornhuskCreations.com” and have a brilliantly crafted website.  Your webmaster should be able to also get you email account with the same domain name. You ask them to set up an account that maybe identifies you by your first name, let’s say “don@cornhuskcreations.com”.  They will then teach you how to log into that account and use the email software associated with it.

But what it I don’t have a website or a webmaster? It gets a bit trickier then.  You really should have a website and I’ll talk about that in an upcoming article. For starters though:

I recommend you go to the Network Solutions website (http://www.networksolutions.com) to buy a domain name for your business and an associated array of email boxes.  On their homepage you can insert domain names you are interested in for your future website until you find a name you like that is available (if you are a for-profit enterprise don’t settle for anything less than “.com”).

Then call the Network Solutions help line listed on their homepage.  Tell them you want buy that domain name, set up an email account and ask them to walk you through it.  You may have to buy an email package too, but the costs are reasonable.  When you buy a hosting package with them your domain name and email accounts are typically free, but you probably aren’t ready to go that far.

The reason I’m a big fan is that Network Solutions always has a great technician available to talk to and they are very helpful, never making you feel stupid.  When I started building websites I had no clue what I was doing, only some software and a book. Technicians at Network Solutions have always been patient with me, even though they were dealing with a rank novice.

First impressions and brand-building are extremely important.  Put you best foot forward whenever you send an email.

Gary Dickens    October 2010