What could be simpler than an email address? As with many aspects of starting your own business, it needs careful consideration.
At Turner Little, we help new business owners get started, and can advise on everything from finance options to offshore banking. But we also want to help with the smaller, behind-the-scenes decisions. Here is our guide to structuring your business email addresses in the most beneficial way.
Branding considerations
While selecting your email address may not seem important when you have many other decisions to make, getting it right early on is helpful. You need to consider how the address chosen would work with your start up as it grows, and how it reflects your company’s brand.
All start-ups in 2018 should have an online presence. When you have registered your domain name you will be able to set up an email account which incorporates your domain name in order to maintain your brand (e.g.enquiries@turnerlittle.com). This is the quickest option for customers to communicate with you simply.
Communicating with different people
In terms of structuring the email addresses that you need for your business moving forward you need to consider who in the course of running your business you will need to communicate with and whether you want to start with dedicated email addresses for each channel for example, do you want an ‘accounts@’ or ‘sales@’email address as well as your generic ‘info’ or ‘enquiries@’
As the business grows you may want to employ members of staff and enable them to have their own email address. There will inevitably be a portfolio of addresses to manage as your horizons expand. These will use the same domain name but have different prefixes. Here are some options to help you organise them.
- Shared inboxes
An early decision will be whether you use a generic address as the first point of contact for customers. Sharing an email address such as ‘sales@’ will mean all staff can see and reply to queries. This minimises the chances of missing important queries however proper processes and audits must be put in place to ensure that every enquiry is dealt with and responses are not duplicated.
An advantage of managing emails in this way is that it is easy to monitor everything that is coming in and going out of the business. It gives business owners and managers a good idea of what customers are thinking and can help inform business decisions.
- The personal touch
Any emails to a generic address can also be sent to personal email accounts. Setting up an alias to receive generic emails straight to personal inboxes is a good way of organising communications for a small company.
This helps ensure responsibility is taken for all messages. As the business grows, these can be redirected to other members of staff and the scope can be broadened.
- Being approachable
Shared inboxes and generic email addresses don’t have to be restricted to ‘info@’ or ‘sales@’. You can use them to add a personal touch to your communications and say something about your company. For example, you could set up an email address such as: ‘sayhello@’ or ‘askushow@’.
This way email addresses can be built into the overall branding and marketing plan for your business. It can help your company stand out from the crowd and appeal to different audiences.
Email addresses give flexibility, so you can either be slightly quirky or very straight depending on your sector and communication style.
- Email protocols
When you start out as a small business you could be tempted to keep email addresses as friendly as possible. For example, many companies choose to use first names only as a prefix, such as john@yourcompany.co.uk.
However, this can cause issues as the business grows and more staff are taken on. Deciding on a fixed protocol when you set up your email addresses will allow for consistency later. Firstname.surname@yourcompany.co.uk could work for your business better than first name only, particularly if you are planning to rapidly expand.
Successful email management
Assigning the correct people to deal with shared account messages is key to managing your company’s email accounts. It is also vital to define and lay out the action that should be taken, when it should be taken and have a follow up in place to ensure communication is working.
For more tips on starting your own business, and for expert financial advice, contact the team at Turner Little.
About Turner Little
Founded in 1998 in Yorkshire, UK, Turner Little is a specialist UK and offshore company formation, banking and corporate services provider. Our services include company formation, UK and offshore banking, asset protection, credit correction/repair, trademarking and trusts. Other services include Internet services, mail forwarding, wills and probate. Turner Little’s vision is to offer the best possible service, together with market leading products.
