As more companies employ email as a means of reaching out to customers and contractors, our email addresses have become part of our identity; they reflect a small part of who we are: our names, our work, and- sometimes- the teams we root for. There is another part of the email address that we don’t tend to think about, but it just happens to tell a lot about the services we use.
If your email address end with an @gmail.com then you are being associated with Gmail, the free email service provided by Google. Every time your email address is seen, the viewer is reminded of Google. This is a mini commercial: perhaps subliminal, yet very effective. Seeing an email address @gmail.com again and again makes it easier to think of ‘gmail.com,’ making it easier to think of the parent company Google, which predisposes people to think of google when opportunities arise.
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have benefited from the mass use of their free email systems. Users are an important part of their marketing plan. This is a decent plan with benefits for all parties; however, instead of participating in their marketing plan, you could benchmark it and learn from it. You could reap the rewards of subliminal marketing for your company when you send and receive emails.
The benefit of using @yourdomain.com, is that your company receives a ‘mini’ commercial every time someone sends to, or receives an email from, your company. It becomes easier for your clients, vendors, and prospective markets to remember your company name- to think of your company name- which increases the potential of your company to benefit from word-of-mouth.
If you currently use- and still need to use- @gmail.com, but would like to switch to @yourdomain.com, there are a few easy options to make this transition seamless and smooth:
- We can help you setup your Gmail account to send and receive email from @yourdomain.com. You will still receive emails from your Gmail account. This step is an excellent way of transitioning from the old system to the new system, without losing any of your contacts.
- If you would like to check @yourdomain.com through Outlook, webmail or some other program via Imap, Pop3 or Exchange, we can help you with this option.
Both of these options allow you to transition to a professional email address without losing access to the emails sent to the old one. Even better, everything can flow into a single inbox. If you would like to explore any of these options, contact iRapture.com and we can help set it up. We look forward to hearing from you.
Author
Jacob Barr
Jacob Barr is the owner and CEO of iRapture.com.
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