Using Your Domain Name in your Email Address

Mad River Consulting recommends using your domain name in your email address, whether it is set-up as an alias or a pop box. The numerous advantages are as follows:

• You are continually reinforcing your company name and domain name and marketing your firm rather than your ISP. Go into "Tools Accounts" or "Tools Options" in your email program and change the "from" and "reply-to" addresses to reflect your domain email address(es).
• If you decide to change internet services someday, the change in your email will be transparent. You're network of prospects, clients and business associates will already have your domain email, and this will be reprogrammed to point to a new email account that you establish. This is similar to the situation where your mailing address does not change if you move your place of business and you have a PO box. If your "network" has been using an actual email address, encourage them to use an alias/domain email address, and try to allow 6 to 12 months before changing or discontinuing services.
• Some places where you list your website do not allow a link to your website, or do not allow you to visibly display your URL. An alias/domain email address accomplishes the not-so-subtle task of making your domain known so they can type it in themselves.
• Domain email allows you to do targeted marketing and promotions. You can display a specific email address such as magspecial@yourdomain.com to offer a special price, for example, only honoring it when people write to you using that address. This allows you to measure the effectiveness of specific marketing efforts.

Occasionally an ISP's email server programming becomes disabled or is changed, causing you to lose or temporarily lose emails. If you use your alias on a regular basis, you would notice a disruption in email service quickly. In most cases, the lost emails are "hung" on the server and can be retrieved. For this reason, we suggest you establish a REGULAR schedule of testing all distinct email aliases or pop boxes. This applies to forms, too—test the forms on your website once per month.

When signing up for new services or submitting an email address to a new site, use a specific email address that can be tracked for abuse. Example, I use sbc@madriverconsulting.com for my link on the Chamber site. I see numerous spam emails coming in using this address; they have culled it from the visible page. If a new service or site doesn't put the email address on the page (simply putting the word "Email"), then if you receive emails from elsewhere using this address, it is possible that the new service distributed it.

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