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Brand Recognition and Your Email Address

EmailYou cannot improve website traffic with a throw-away email address. Gmail, Yahoo!, HotMail and the rest are known as “throw-away” email addresses. They are great to increase your anonymity and sense of security, but they do not, and prob’ly never will command very much credibility. I also use these throw-away addresses when required to provide an email address for ordering something or joining a site I am not sure of. There are some good reasons to use throw-aways. But there is one very important reason for webmasters to use addresses that belong to your domains: Brand Recognition.

As webmasters, we all want our websites to be known. We work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), try to create linkback strategies and develop brand recognition to bring more visitors to our websites. That’s why it continues to amaze me when I see webmasters ignore or abandon one of the great brand recognition tools you can use - your-name@your-website.com. I’m sure many of you have the common, even necessary email addresses assigned to your websites, info@yoursite.com, admin@yoursite.com, webmaster@yoursite.com and the like. But I rarely see webmasters use them for actual email communications on a regular basis..


I set up these accounts for all my websites. Sometimes I redirect them to a more personal address, other times I just use the administrative address. In other words, I have emails like “info@jmfloorcovering.com,” “webmaster@1footinthegrave.com” and “admin@grumpsplace.com.” But because I do a certain amount of business or personal communications with these accounts, they are redirected to more personal email addresses like “Jim@JMFloorcovering.com,” “Jim@1FootInTheGrave.com” and “Grump@GrumpsPlace.com.” I still use a more formal approach for a forum though: admin@TheFloorPro.com - because that domain will be passed on to heirs.

So, when I send email to anyone, it is designed to get them to recognize my domain and visit my website. If they forward my email to anyone, it increases the number of people my domain names are exposed to. Brand recognition is very important in promoting your business or website. It’s a sign of professionalism. If you don’t use every opportunity, you lessen your chances of success. Using a throw-away address is like throwing good money and opportunity away.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Articles, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Brand Recognition and Your Email Address”

  1. Jerry Thomas Says:
    November 29th, 2008 at 4:29 am

    I have found it works better for me to use a different email address other than my website. Spam filters are constantly filtering out my website address but will allow my cox.net to get thru. I get people emailing me thru my contact page but when i reply some don’t get it. They email me back with the same question, over and over and over.

    have a great day partner.
    Jerry

  2. Jim McClain Says:
    November 29th, 2008 at 11:35 am

    That is almost always the fault of your IP address, Jerry, not your email address. Your IP address has been handed down to you from previous users and sometimes you share the same IP address as others. If your IP address has had a history of being blocked or reported as spam, it will carry that stigma to anyone who uses it. You can correct the situation in a couple of ways:

    • Contact the administration of each of the domains that block you and ask to be removed from their black list (their address is often abuse@[domain-name-here])
    • Ask your host, in your case 1&1.com, to change your IP address
    • Move your hosting to a new company that doesn’t have a record of providing services to spammers

    A quick check with any number of websites you would consider are being run by reputable and professional organizations and you will see they all use email addresses with their domain name. Check the websites of your favorite household products, the manufacturer of your vehicle, the nationally recognized stores you like to shop at or the television stations or movies you enjoy. They do not use email addresses provided by their individual Internet Service Providers, they use email addresses that use their domain name because it is part of their brand recognition scheme. In your case, Jerry, using cox.net only helps cox.net, it doesn’t help Custom-Surfaces.com. - R’gards, Jim

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