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Choosing the right professional email address for your business is an important decision for your business. Why? First impressions, data management and professionalism are all key factors. If you are still using an old email address (Yahoo or AOL) as your primary method of contact for clients, it is time to leap into the future and embrace creating a point of contact that will grow with you through your career.

What is a professional email address?

For this discussion, a professional email address is one that ends in your company’s name and not gmail.com or yahoo.com, for example. Having a professionally branded email address with your name or your company’s name helps establish credibility and brand recognition with your clients and potential clients.

Why does a professional email matter?

A professional email address is less likely to get sent to a spam folder. It also communicates an extra level of professionalism. Additionally, each person on your team can have their own company email, and you can have shared emails for things like closings and sales to provide information quickly to clients because multiple people are monitoring the shared accounts.

Why use Google Workspace for your professional email address?

Yes, there are other hosting services for your professional emails like GoDaddy’s Webmail, but here are 8 reasons why you should consider using Google Workspace.

• Easy set up: It only takes a few minutes.
• No additional training: No special skills are required.
• High security: Google works to provide the highest security standards.
• User roles and permissions: Allows for flexibility for you and your team.
• More integrations: Gmail integrates easily with most third-party developers.
• Shared mailboxes: You can easily set up and share mailboxes for collaboration and responding to clients efficiently. 
• Mobile friendly: You can send, receive and compose emails easily on your mobile device.
• It is affordable: Packages start at $6 per month.

Steps to setting up 

For specific questions and more details on setting up and using Google Workspace for your professional email, you can go to their page at https://workspace.google.com/products/gmail/.

• Step 1: Click the “Get Started Button” on the Google Workspace page for their email product.
• Step 2: Enter the business name you would like to use (your business name or website domain you intend to use), the number of employees and the region you are doing business in the United States for most readers.
• Step 3: Designate the name of the Google Workspace account administrator (you) and the current email you would like to use to help set up the professional business account.
• Step 4: Use a domain you already own or let Google secure the domain you intend to use by entering the desired domain and seeing if it is available. (It is just an additional charge when you complete the process for securing a new domain.)
• Step 5: Enter your business address and phone number. Suggest a physical location as Google likes to confirm a physical address for their products with a postcard sometimes and if you don’t already have a designated phone for your business, try an app like Sideline for your mobile phone.
• Step 6: Pick a user name. This could be your name to appear before the professional domain like jeff@companyname.com with the company name of the domain you selected. Think about naming conventions here for future team members or team roles. Do you want first name only? First and last name? Last name first? You get the idea.
• Step 7: Add a credit card for the monthly billing for your professional email and the new domain if you did not already have one.

Tips for efficient use 

Once you have your professional email setup, consider creating a shared email like info@companyname.com to work with others to monitor client communications, respond quickly and collaborate on workflow like a closing. Additionally, consider setting up a third-party email analytic program like Email Analytics to provide data like all emails sent and received, top senders and recipients and how long an average email thread lasts.

Now you have your professional email address

Having a professional email address for your business is important to establish credibility and brand recognition with clients and potential clients. People expect and prefer to use email for business transactions and check their email on mobile devices. Your professional email hosting platform needs to be mobile-friendly and offer the security and flexibility you need to maintain and grow your business. Google Workspace provides everything you need for a professional email service that is easy to set up and use.

Jeff is the founder of Arbor Advising. You can connect with him on Linkedin and Twitter.