I have an unusually large number of email addresses (something like 40 existing, 20 active, 5 very active). When possible I funnel them all through the same inbox, but I’m running into some frustrating tech issues so I was considering a shift.
How much do you judge businesses whose email domains differ from their sites? 1 judgment different name dot com, 2 Gmail, 3 Hotmail, 4 AOL?
— Virginia Roberts (@askvirginia) August 19, 2014
I did a little informal polling to take the temperature of my tweeps on this issue. This is by no means a typical societal sampling; I tend to follow fairly techy and geeky people, many of whom pay close attention to these sorts of details, just as I do.
The results were diverse and illuminating to me, so I figured I’d organize and share them in case it sheds any light for other business owners who struggle with email perception dilemmas! :)
General thoughts
@askvirginia 1) not great 2) even worse, 3) dear god, 4) Are you for real?
— haroldina (@princessharold) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia All of those are less bad than a business which only has a Facebook page.
— Adam L. Cox (@adamlcox) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia 0% at all. No judgement.
— Kai Davis (@kaisdavis) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia gmail says ‘I am making this business happen, even if I don’t have all the technology perfectly sorted out yet.’
— Liz Marley (@emarley) August 20, 2014
@askvirginia If they don’t have email with their domain, I can’t take their online presence seriously.
— Josh Hrach (@JerenYun) August 19, 2014
@JerenYun @askvirginia ditto. I’m really picky about that.
— Jesús Riera (@jssrea) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia I don’t *necessarily* think less of the business, but it will make me think they’re less likely to be on top of >
— Olaf (@Sasooli) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia > e-stuff in general – e.g.processing online orders properly/on time, up-to-date website, etc.
— Olaf (@Sasooli) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia I don’t really rank it but I definitely judge. I feel like a personalized domain name is important.
— Adam Kerney (@awkerney) August 20, 2014
The Pro-AOL camp, sort of:
@askvirginia aol emails are ironically funny though
— ㄅ₮∆иﾚ◊ (@StanloGraphics) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia My iTunes account is an AOL email account. I’m judging myself.
— Ronnie Lutes (@RonnieLutes) August 19, 2014
The Same Domain As Business Site camp:
@askvirginia A pretty shocking majority of candidates in our recent election didn’t have named domain emails. And yeah I judged them for it.
— ㄅ₮∆иﾚ◊ (@StanloGraphics) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia More professional to have a custom domain for sure, and that’s coming from someone whose boyfriend’s business uses Gmail.
— bird (@birdinthecity) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia It always makes me feel that I’m probably dealing with a very small business (not that this is a bad thing).
— Keith Bradnam (@kbradnam) August 19, 2014
@kaisdavis @askvirginia it’s a braaaaaaanding thing. I have a vanity email address that keeps Google’s name and brand off my sig & card.
— Henry T. Casey (@henrytcasey) August 19, 2014
After that, I clarified my thinking that I was planning on switching from a theheartographer.com email address to a virginiaroberts.com email address for my Heartographer contact page.
On Your Name Dot Com domains
@askvirginia Having your own domain with your name is more professional than ‘businessvirginia127@gmail.com’
— Josh Hrach (@JerenYun) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia 1 feels suspicious almost (unless it’s like @vroberts.com, very personal) 2 is “oh, small place†3 ehhh 4 UH OH.
— Ian Adams (@IanWAdams) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia I used my name domain for Sweating Commas work at first. I don’t think it caused issues, but I switched cuz it bugged me.
— Jason Rehmus ☠(@SweatingCommas) August 19, 2014
@SweatingCommas @askvirginia Your domain or name domain is fine, I reckon. Free domain = awful. #IMNSVHO
— Andrew Lightheart (@alightheart) August 19, 2014
The Security Concerns camp:
@askvirginia i worry when domains don’t match I’m being phished…
— Rachael Worthington (@nothe) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia If I see that someone is using Gmail, it also means my information in emails to that person might be mined/sold by Google :-/
— Keith Bradnam (@kbradnam) August 19, 2014
@askvirginia for solo business, gmail or same domain is good. Otherwise I raise an eyebrow.
— Liz Marley (@emarley) August 20, 2014
What am I missing here?
@askvirginia Poor, forgotten, Yahoo!
— Nicolas Ward (@UltraNurd) August 19, 2014
Haha, character limits made me pare down my list. But we agreed that we rank Yahoo between Hotmail and Gmail on the sketch scale.
My takeaway
After weighing all this, I probably won’t end up changing a thing, haha. That is, I’ll keep using a theheartographer.com address on my theheartographer.com business site.
But this was a fun poll! now I feel like I have even clearer reasons now for rocking as many different email addresses as I do. And at least one other person found it helpful:
@askvirginia Grateful for this conversation; has made me re-think/organize my email identity. Multiple addresses = chaos, sometimes!
— Polly MarshallTaplin (@PollyTaplin) August 20, 2014
You still have to pick a decent domain, though!
Hey @askvirginia, I believe we have a new number one entry for your list of quality e-mail domains. pic.twitter.com/iWKFwKFqII
— Grant K. Roberts (@gkr) August 20, 2014