Brand Recognition and Your Email Address
You 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..
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.