I’m often surprised at the number of business people who conduct business regularly using free email accounts from Google, Yahoo, or MSN/Hotmail. If you have a website, it just makes sense to conduct business using the domain of your website.

So, if your domain is mydomain.com, make sure to setup email addresses for each member of your organization, jane@mydomain.com, john@mydomain.com.

There are several good reasons for this:

1. Branding – when people see your domain name, they associate it with a web site. Using an email address from your own domain reinforces your company’s branding
2. Usability – it’s much easier to remember an email address tied to a company’s domain. My email address is eric@ivycat.com. If people can remember my name and this domain, it easier
3. Control – call me greedy, but I like having control over the email domain. This way, I can add add new accounts, forwarders, setup filters, etc.

Most hosting accounts come with a certain number of email accounts and forwarders and they’re not hard to setup. If you need help, your web host or IT person should be able to help.

Email forwarders (aka. aliases) are not actual email accounts, rather they’re email addresses that simply redirect email to another account. No mail is stored in the forwarder/alias itself; the mail is stored in the account(s) to which the mail is forwarded.

Small businesses often want to appear larger than they are, while keeping very personalized customer contact. One strategy is to setup forwarders that you use on your site or marketing materials that are redirected to an individual or a group.

Your hosting account should allow you to setup generic email addresses like info@ and sales@ and have them redirected to the individual(s) within the company responsible for these communications.

Here are a few ways email forwarders can benefit you:

1. Personal Service – Since the messages are forwarded to actual email accounts, responses will come from the individual, rather than the forwarder. For example, if you email sales@ivycat.com, the email is forwarded to my account, so when I reply, you get an email from Eric, an individual, rather than a faceless generic company address.
2. Flexibility – if an employee leaves, you can easily redirect the forwarder to a different address, so you don’t have to check another account.
3. Marketing – since forwarders are cheap (usually free) you can setup different email address for individual marketing campaigns so you can better track return on investment.
4. Appear Larger – while we all want to provide personal service, sometimes its helpful to appear larger than you actually are
5. Individual anonymity – Using forwarders allows you to keep your individual employee email addresses hidden.

So, consider your organization’s email setup and see if email forwarders might help you deal with mail more efficiently.