What does your business email address say about your company?
In todays digital world having a website and email address is more important than before, but what should your email address be?
Branding
Deliverability
professionalism
Costs
Branding
Your email needs to represent your brand so should be consistent with your website. What do I mean by this? A couple of things really. First up is a consistent name. Why would you create a website or brand with 1 name then have an email address from a different name?
Would this confuse your customers? Yes
Could this mean your email go unread? This definitely increases the chances of it.
So what is the best solution for branding?
Have your email coming from the same domain as your website i.e You are now on WDexplored.co.uk so would expect any email communication to come from an email address ending @wdexplored.co.uk. If I were to email from other domains such as wdclient.com then I would expect many emails to go unanswered or be rejected. With the rise of spam and scam emails if potential customers are unsure the last thing you want is your emails being marked as spam.
Is your business email address safe?
Deliverability
Using a random domain for sending your company emails could be doing more harm than you realise. When you send out an email to customers or even potential customers then you want them to see the email you have spent time crafting.
Have you ever wondered why some companies always ask you to check your Junk folder or Spam filter? If you did not check then you could miss an important email.
The deliverability is often over looked and there are some great tools out there to check your deliverability. check out this article from my friends at SendX. Making sure your email is set for maximum deliverability will increase your open rates and conversions.
If you send 100 emails, but only 90 get them then that is a 10% decrease across all stats.
Using a good service that is set up correctly will help your brand.
Is your business email address allowed in?
Professionalism
You want your emails to look professional and this includes the email address.
Why do Car manufacturers spend so much on door handles?
Like the email address and preview are the first interaction with a potential customer. Having a branded email says a lot about your business. it shows that you have put thought in to your business and the email is not an afterthought.
It also has perceived image that you have spent money to have a professional look so are likely to be around longer.
Costs
Getting a professional branded business email address does not have to be expensive. Many hosting companies include email hosting as part of the package. I use Siteground‘s Go Geek package . Setting up their email hosting is quick and easy even providing the detail on how to set it up on your PC, Mac, Android and iPhone.
Then there are the paid email services 2 main ones are: Google Workspaces or Microsoft 365 Business. These handle all of your emails separately so if your hosting has any issues, your email is unaffected. Also using a 3rd party for emails can give you better deliverability as long as they are setup correctly. This is where it can get a bit technical, but the paid providers all have tech support on hand to help you through the process.
Google Workspaces
365 Business
Cost per month
£4.60 / £9.20 /£13.80
£4.56 / £11.28 / £18.12
With the above 2 you also get online software bundled such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentation , notes and more
Personally here at WD Explored I use Google Workplace for our email, so when setting up on a new device or linking to software, I can click on the Gmail option and the process is quick and simple.
Final Thoughts
For small businesses just starting out looking to keep costs low I can see the attraction of the free email services such as Gmail, Hotmail, Live etc, but once the business has a website up there is no reason not to have a company email address. When choosing a website host or going through an agency mention email and this will be free or very cheap, then once the business grows you can upgrade to the paid for services and bring all of your emails with you.
With the extra features included with the paid for services, could that cost remove the need for office software and be part of a disaster recovery plan or offsite backups?
As a local business having leaflets is a great way to let the public know what you are offering and where you are.
There are many many places to get leaflets designed, whether it is on Fiverr or a local designer. Some may help with the process or offer suggestions or design solutions to help you achieve the look you are after. Others may just design as asked. Finding a good graphic designer can pay dividends as they can coach you through the design for all of your marketing materials keeping consistency in message and feel.
From working at a range of companies and speaking to lots of marketing people many companies fail a simple marketing technique, something that print companies or graphic designers should mention to clients more.
Take a look at the recent leaflets you have received through your door. have a look at how they landed through your letterbox or how you first see them
Can you spot it?
Look closely at the [X] leaflet, next to it the plain white blank leaflet. Actually, it is not blank, but when being printed the business owner did not consider how it would land on your mat.
It is understandable if there is space left to input quote details or dimensions needed before a quote can be given, but many are blank either down to cost, laziness from the designer or lack of knowledge.
Double Siding
Double siding does not always mean double the cost, even if you printed the same on both sides or for example a photographer doing weddings and portraits. 1 side advertising the great wedding packages, the other advertising family portraits and a line at the bottom stating ‘please turn over for our great wedding offers’.
This way you can prodice 1 leaflet and hit 2 markets, also cross promotion.
Ideally each side would have a link to a specific landing page i.e amoramorphotography.co.uk/babies and amoramorphotography.co.uk/family this way the ‘landing pages’ can be specific to the customer they are trying to convert.
Welcome to the second edition of “Invest in your website”
In Edition 1 we highlighted key benefits that can be achieved by investing in your website, and introduced you to “Mason’s Butchers” a family run business in Bournemouth. We established that a Google search returned useful results that would easily direct potential customers to their business. However we discovered that their Facebook page could do with some TLC.
For Edition 2 we will go through how improvements can be made on key components;
1.Confirm the details
Starting with the basics is key. The following details need to be confirmed which can be completed easily;
Business Name: If the business is registered in the UK you can check Companies House be sure to check that any apostrophe’s, spaces or hyphens are included;
Business Address: This can be checked with Royal Mail if the business is within the UK;
Business Telephone Number: The easiest way to validate this is to call it and see who answers.;
Business Email Address: The easiest way to this is if you have access to web hosting;
Business Social Media Profiles: The business should hopefully have these details to hand, however if not a quick Google search will bring up any pages.
Now that these details have been confirmed you can start to get to work.
2. Check the Website hosting
Is the website hosting reliable and provided by a reputable company? To check this you can use 1and1 or Bluehosts (affiliate links )
3.The Website.
Here we have 2 options:
Remove the annual holiday details and leave the website as is continuing to work on the rest then revisit the website later. Jump to next step
Overhaul the website now and get it working then proceed to drive traffic from different sources.
So What would we do with the website.
Move from Joomla to Wordpress. This is a personal preference as I specialise in wordpress. Joomla is good but would need a specialist to code. During the move I would keep the site as is, developing a new site on a staging domain.
On the staging site create new pages then set them all to go live together.
Create an online catalogue showing off the different items they can sell. As the prices could vary this would be the easiest way. Allowing people to link to the product in the catalogue and make sure each product is detailed containing allergy information, where is it sourced from and what fed on. How often it is delivered and the months it is in season, also links to recipes would be an idea.
Change the favicon (the little image in the tab above) this would be the company logo i.e white square with red text saying Masons going through.
Makes sure there is a contact page with all the information and also a form so customers can send us an email with any special requests.
Add more photos of the shop, the layout so customers feel familiar when they visit, perhaps some pictures of the prep area.
Set up a blog page so they can then blog about recipes using the produce they sell, farm visits to see the next batch of meat before it is sent for slaughter. Health advice about some of the speciality meats, advice about which cuts of meat are best for which meal. Promote drinks from a local off-licence to have with the meats.
Set up email collection so people can be e-mailed when new seasons start and new meats come in to stock.
Set up a simple ordering online or online payment for customers who would like delivery in the local area.
Set up An SSL certificate (https) making the website secure.
Link to the company social media sites
Make sure the website is mobile responsive, with mobile search now greater than desktop search this is a must
Link the website to google webmaster tools and search console so you can see what people type in before they come to your website so some target pages could be created for greater traffic.
4. Claim the social media pages.
Facebook
Claim the Facebook page and make sure all the details are correct. We would setup the customer as the main admin then request access through our business portal so we do not need to know your password. getting a graphic designer to create a range of header banners for different seasons and public holidays. i.e BBQ season in the UK, chicken at Easter, Turkey for Christmas/ Thanks giving. etc.
Also promote new blog posts on the Facebook page again taking potential customers to the website so they can see the produce. and promoting new products. Allowing customers to check in whilst in the shop and also leave reviews.
Twitter
Setup twitter as for Masons there is no account. Then getting a graphic designer to create a range of header banners for different seasons and public holidays. This would be another platform to inform customers of new products or when deliveries have arrived.
Instagram
This would be great for posting Photographs of the different meat cuts, prepared meals, life in the shop. These do not have to be professionally taken, many business use a mobile phone with a good camera. There are good guides on taking photos with mobile phones here
5. Claim the Google My Business and Maps listing
Claiming this makes sure people can find you on google business directory and the information is correct, you can also reply to any reviews of the business here, This will also set up a Google Pluspage for the business where you can post updates, blog posts etc. Thinks google version of Facebook. This will provide the web master a wealth of information about how people interact with your website. We can be set as an admin once the account is setup, this means if you did decide to move web companies you could go in and remove access (but we hope this doesn’t happen)
6. Directory Listings
We would now proceed to search the web for directory listings, making sure they have the correct information in them and if they have any reviews we can monitor them to reply to. We would put the review sites in a spreadsheet with links and login information so they can be easily checked. For sharing passwords we would recommend Last pass
7. Remarketing and Email marketing
we would now add the google remarketing code to the website and the facebook Pixel to the website so if a customer comes to the website once we will follow them around the website. We can adjust the parameters on how this happens so we are not constantly bombarding them.
We would sign up to Active Campaign or Mail chimp. This would collect name, email address and contact method so we could email them at the start of a new season, when specific meat they have enquired about is in stock or to wish them happy birthday
8. Advertising
Now we could move on to advertising on Facebook ads, Twitter Ads, Google adwords to promote any offers, and get the word out to the local community
9. Promotion
When we have gone through everything above we would then post on our social media pages and Linkedin pages. this would help promote our business and skills and also the customers business.
You can follow this guide through and let us know what results you got or if you would like us to do this for you please contact us.
