Registering a domain name to protect your brand is just the first step.
Next you need to consider whether or not your business plan involves sending or receiving emails. If it does, then you’ll definitely want to ensure that you capitalise on the professional reputation your domain name will be giving you.
This is where Email Hosting comes in!
What is Email Hosting?
There’s a good chance that you already have a personal email address from one of the various free email providers. It might perhaps be based around your name, with a few random characters added to it somewhere, as someone else with a similar name already had the original. If you’re just using it to keep in touch with friends or family then this isn’t a problem, but just think about what impression it might give to a customer who receives an email from that address. If the sender appears as a random email address then it might make them concerned, cause them difficulties in remembering it, or worst of all – create a poor first impression of your business!
Email Hosting is the answer to this problem. It allows you to send out emails from a personalised email address that is specific to your own bespoke domain(s). An email from sales@yourbusinessname.co.uk will make you seem far more professional than one from yourname123@randomdomain.com.
What else does Email Hosting offer?
Presenting a professional brand image is a key feature, but Email Hosting offers a number of other advantages that will make your life much easier.
Create multiple email addresses
Imagine the benefits of having a unique email account for each part of your business – such as sales@, accounts@ or enquiries@. Not only will this make it much easier for you to manage your customer communications, but it will also help to reinforce the view that you are a trusted and respectable business.
Virus & spam filtering
With most of the free email providers, you can either classify a received email as spam, or state that it isn’t spam. Email Hosting also allows this, but also provides you with much more granular control over the sensitivity of the spam filters. A convenient slider bar allows you to control how strict, or how loose, you would like it to be. This is a fantastic way of controlling the amount of suspected emails that make it through to your inbox.
Set up email forwarding
Email Hosting gives you the ability to forward your emails to another address, either temporarily or permanently. This is ideal if you’re going away for a few days and want someone else to handle your emails for you.
Create mail groups
Create a unique email address that delivers to multiple different recipients. For example, if you have a team of several accounts assistants, then you can create an accounts@ address to deliver to all of them.
Access from anywhere
Email Hosting also comes with an easy to use online WebMail that you can access from anywhere, just like a normal website. This is incredibly useful for quick access to your emails if you’re away from the office, out of the country, or using a different device.
Sync across multiple devices
Perhaps most useful of all, the IMAP functionality included with Email Hosting means that emails will synchronise across all your various devices. If you reply to an email from your phone when you’re out, you’ll see what you sent on your computer when you’re back in the office. This way you’ll always be up to date, easily able to keep track of all your important emails no matter where you are or which device you’re using.
As you can see, there are many advantages with Email Hosting. Not only will you be enhancing your brand reputation and boosting your business image, but you’ll also be benefiting from a huge range of intuitive email management tools. You’ll wonder how you ever coped without them!