Personalize
Your E-mail Address – Before and After the @ Sign
by: Joel Heffner 
One of the most important aspects
of e-mail for a small-business owner is getting an address that
folks will remember. It’s just like getting a memorable domain
name for your web site. It seems strange to me to get a message
from someone in business with an e-mail address like Rman502 as
the name. What kind of image does that portray in the mind of
a potential client?
On the Internet, your web site and your
e-mail address comprise your persona – so it’s important to
make them favorable. The best name, in my opinion, is your own
name. When I first got onto the Internet in 1995, AOL had a
limit of 10 characters for any name – so I had to settle for
JHeffner@aol.com. Today, AOL’s limit is 16, so I registered
for joelheffner@aol.com.
You can have more than one e-mail account,
and many online companies offer this as a free service. For
example, Yahoo.com, Email.com and Mail.com will allow you to
register your name, as long as no one else has registered for
it first.
However, when you send e-mail from these
services, the message will include an automatic line saying
that the receiver can get a free e-mail account too. I get around
this problem by forwarding my e-mail to my AOL account. Most
ISPs (Internet Service Providers) do not add such extra lines
to outgoing e-mail. Forwarding my mail also makes it easier
for me to track my mail. I don’t have to open up joelheffner@mail.com
– mail to that address automatically goes into my main e-mail
address.
Mail.com provides some great domain names
to use for your e-mail address. For example, I also use joelheffner@consultant.com
and joelheffner@columnist.com. They cost about $30 a year, but
to me they are worth it. Different people know me in different
ways. Each can think of the name they prefer.
Your business name is also perfect for
a personalized e-mail address. You always want to make it easy
for folks to communicate with you. Personalized e-mail seems
to be one of the cheapest and best ways of accomplishing this
goal.
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