Getting serious about email

When you have your own domain (e.g. yourdomain.com) and your own web site, you also get email at that domain.

Your email address sends a signal. Right or wrong, your email address can indicate how serious you are about your online presence. It may not be a fair assessment, but whenever I see an AOL email address on a business card, it tells me that this person is, shall we say, unsophisticated about the web. The same goes for email addresses that are provided by an internet service provider, like a telephone company or cable company.

If you are serious enough about your online presence to register a domain and get a web site, you must also signal that seriousness by having an email address at that domain.

Having a business email address doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to give up the personal email address you have been using, nor does it mean you have to learn a new email program, or monitor it seperately from your personal email. We can set up your business email address to forward to the email address you actively use, so that nothing has to change in your current email routine.

It is absolutely imperitive, no matter what email address you use, that you read your email on a regular basis. Nothing is worse that allowing email to go unread for more than a long weekend. In the other hand, those who really want to make an impression will monitor and respond to email on an hourly basis at least. You have to decide for yourself what level of responsiveness is right for you.