More Professional Email Tips

A few months ago, we looked at creating a professional email address – just the address itself, and not the practicality of how it might be used.

Today’s tip fills in that practicality gap, because there have been a handful of times in the past couple of weeks where email addresses became a headache to deal with!

Whether you are just beginning to develop your practice, or you’ve been working in advocacy for a while and think a change is in order, or possibly for one of the reasons cited below, here are some tips to help you manage your email and appear more professional.

Tip 1: Separate your personal email from your professional email…

…especially if you share email addresses with someone else. I see so many email addresses that indicate they are for more than one person, like Joan-John-Smith@email.com or SmithFamily@email.com — that’s a no-no when it comes to dealing with clients, of course (no privacy!) Further – who wants to weed through all the other stuff that comes to your other email sharers?  So create an email address that is only for your business purposes and doesn’t mingle with other email.

Tip 2: Don’t use your ISP (internet service provider) email address…

… such as JSmith@verizon.net or JSmith@comcast.net or others. This reason is simple: if you ever decide to change who you purchase internet services from, or if move one day, you may no longer have access to that email address. If you have used it to set up your business, you will lose the ability to access business email. That’s no way to run a railroad!

Tip 3: Avoid using AOL, Yahoo, and Verizon email…

… because too often your email won’t get delivered; you won’t receive important email. In fact, AOL email is such a problem that we’ve written an entire article about it.

Tip 4: If you decide to change email addresses after starting your practice or even just practice preparation…

…then be sure to alert those who need to know, and (important!) keep checking the old one for up to a year to be sure you haven’t missed something you need. For example, you may have subscriptions or memberships that only renew once a year, and you may miss renewal notices.

Tip 5: The perfect email address is the one that uses your web domain…

… like Frank@AdvocatesRUs.com  or  Veronica@AdvocacyForYou.com  Using your domain for your email address can be easily set up for you by whoever develops your website. It’s highly professional. It furthers your brand. And it makes it so easy to keep your business separated from your personal.

Tip 6: Case Matters

See my previous Tip #3 on Case Matters for how you should be writing your email address so people can easily read it.

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