Does Gmail Support or Harm Your Business?
Let’s get right down to it - Are you a professional? Are you in business? Are you representing an organisation or brand?
If you answered yes to one or all of these questions, now might be a good idea to take your Gmail address and hide it…far away. A gmail account is perfect for private, non-business related email correspondence (think Facebook and catalogues for online shopping and mailing your cousin’s best friend’s sister who immigrated from Pretoria to Perth), but it has no place in business.
To get behind some of the compelling reasons why gmail just isn’t business-acceptable anymore, I spoke to Natascha Aweh, Branch Manager for The Computer Guyz based in Centurion, Pretoria. As specialists in the SME market for IT and support, she was sure to have some answers.
“In business terms people are by default suspicious of a companies authenticity if they are using @gmail or other free mail addresses. Many corporate and SME clients that we see while performing IT Support are implementing firewalls that prevent the company from accepting traffic from free e-mail addresses simply to cut down the volumes of electronic junk mail that they receive” said Natascha.
In South Africa, domain hosting is not really expensive and you don’t even need a website in order to have a domain name for your email address e.g.: info@mybusiness.co.za. According to Natascha, “For R150 a year you can register and reserve your own .co.za domain. For very little more you can get mailbox hosting and support. While gmail.com remains the favourite for discreet personal communications and as a tool for registering for newsletters to reduce the amount of junk mail you receive in your work e-mail, it really isn't acceptable as a business tool.”
In addition to sounding professional, this type of email address also provides valuable branding and marketing opportunities – recipients will see your email address in their inbox even if they don’t open your mail. If your brand isn't showing up in a prospective client’s inbox, your competitor’s undeniably will! Having a brand specific email address attract less attention from hackers and can also make your small business appear much larger.
According to Brand Specialist Thor Pedersen, “Your company web and domain is an intrinsic part of your brand – that’s how people will communicate with you daily. It’s the first digital impression that you create –and we all know that in business terms, first impressions definitely count. For bang for your buck, you cannot possibly do better than registering your company domain and using it for e-mail. Additionally, you get a level of IT support from your ISP – getting support from an overseas free service is never going to be hassle free.”
Even my local designer Juan weighed in when I asked what he thought of printing my new cards with a @yahoo.com address “I’d actually refuse to design it. I don’t want you telling people I designed and printed something that just looks tacky. I’d rather walk away from business than do that”
Sales Manager at the Computer Guyz, Nicholas Smith commented “Our domain hosting services at The Computer Guyz offer superior security and support. We’re an IT Support and Web company and provide our services to clients in the Centurion, Johannesburg area, as well as Durban and Cape Town. It’s time to drop that tacky free-mail address and get serious about your businesses image”
So there you have it in a nutshell. The experts clearly agree, if you’re entrusting your companies brand (big or small) to a free mail provider, you could be doing more damage than not good. Every business has a brand and should start working on tailoring it to look professional from day one.
When you consider the risks to your IT systems, the costs and levels of support it’s absolutely mind boggling why anyone would ever hand you a card with their business name proudly displayed next to an "i-don’t-care.co.za" domain
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