Marketing No Brainers

Is Your Email Address Professional?

September 26th, 2007Rants, Strategy

One thing that always gets me is what people call themselves online. At one of my offline jobs, it was my duty to field all email inquiries. I’d get emails from “badd*sscop (a real county sheriff,) cutesexyjulie (actually over 60,) etc. I got to know some of these people when they became customers, so these are real examples.

So here’s an earth shattering revelation for you. If you have an email address that you named in order to attract members of the same or opposite sex, or strike fear in the hearts of others, perhaps it isn’t the best thing to use as a business email address.

I shouldn’t have to elaborate, but for the sake of the clueless I will. If your email address is bigbadboy at whatever. com this isn’t professional. If your email is hotlittlechick or bighotmama at wherever. com this isn’t professional either.

Besides sex, other email handles to avoid - anything relating to games, your parenting status, bad habits, violence, religion, or politics. I know I’m missing some other no-nos, but the point is to have a professional sounding email address, as people will judge you by it.

So what’s a simple and professional email address? How about your name at your domain? How simple is that? Of course if you have a hate mongering or porn site you’ll need an alternative.

If you want to use a free web based email provider like Yahoo, Hotmail (urk!) or GMail (Yeah!) then you can still have your name at your domain forwarded into your webmail account. That way you can keep that hunky or babe-like email address for more personal use.

Or at the free email providers a little creativity (like inserting periods in your name) will get you a professional sounding name. Perhaps if it’s not too common, even your own name might be available.

If you just don’t want to put your real name online for some reason there’s always the defaults: webmaster, admin, siteadmin, etc.

As always, in your online business, my advice is to keep things on a professional basis, unless or until the person on the other end is your friend. Your friends may not judge you, but almost everyone else online certainly will. So if you don’t already have one, get yourself a professional email address. And use it.