Business Email Accounts – Why You Need A Strategy

After reviewing Dozens of ‘newbie’ courses on how to set up a domain and email names (and my nearly 30 years of experience in this field) there are some things that you must do (or at least consider).

1. When you buy a domain name, purchase the Private option. I bought a domain recently, forgot the Privacy subscription, and 24 hours after I setup the domain and email I got spam. I hadn’t even put content on my site. I am now fighting the spam, getting 20+ a day, have to add new filters to my mail server and client accounts, and its a real pain.

2. When you create a hosting account, make sure it comes with at least 10 email addresses.

3. After you setup your hosting account, create several email addresses using your new domain name. Typically they are: Firstname@domain.com, Subscriptions@domain.com, Privacy@domain.com, CustomerService@domain.com, Newsletter@domain.com (replace domain.com with your domain name).

These all can be forwarded to your private email. Just don’t reply to questions from your private email.

-Firstname is your ‘business contact’ email.
-Subscriptions is your email you use to join other newsletters when you don’t want to use your private email address.
-CustomerService – yep you will have to answer questions.
-Newsletter – to keep those people that reply to “Do Not Reply To This Address” from replying directly to you. Once you get a person that has your private email, they seem to keep asking, and asking, and asking, and asking…..
-Privacy – Yep – you need a Privacy and Terms of Service page on your site. Using the privacy email address keeps your business email off of the privacy page where spammers can get it.

The first reason for setting up these emails- they help make you look Professional.

The second (even if you use an email service such as Aweber)- if you send out a newsletter, your domain newsletter address is easier to white-list than personal account.

A third reason to never use your private email (yahoo, gmail, hotmail, etc) as a contact email on your site, is if you get attacked by spammers (and no matter how protected you are, you will), they will now have your personal email address.

A forth reason- if you ever had to leave a one-line message for any reason, you can do it with your email address. The prospect knows how to email you And what your domain is called.

Finally, if you build up your business and wish to sell it, you can save a lot of post-sale headaches by not having your personal email attached to the website. I sold a domain 12 years ago, it had an email list of 25,000+ names. To this day I still gat an occasional inquiry to a product site I don’t even own any more. The Web works in mysterious ways.

4. You Must have some sort of a privacy page and Terms of Service. Hey – people are getting Lawsuit-idis. They will sue for just about anything. Having proper notification on your site can keep you out of most trouble. – disclaimer – I am not an attorney, so I recommend you seek appropriate counsel for your particular situation, blah, blah, blah….

Well, there you have it. You can heed this advice, or forever live with spam on your personal email.