Setting up a Professional Business Email And Why You Must!

When you are looking to grow your business it is essential that your professional brand is mirrored throughout every aspect of your business. So if you want to sell like and to the big companies you need to act like them. 

Ensuring you communicate in a professional way is essential. Here we share top tips on email professionalism with your email address.

Although email was introduced back in 1971, it wasn’t until 1993 that we saw the dawn of what was to be one of the most effective method of communication, the electronic mail!

Nowadays most people take it for granted that a business will have an email address in which to communicate at the click of a button, however as with any marketing piece, your email address needs to be consistent with your brand. So a simple personal Gmail or yahoo address may not suffice in creating that vital first impression!

So where do you start?

At this point, let’s make an assumption that you have bought yourself a web domain name, you know that bit you type at the top of your Internet window. At the top of this page you are reading it will say www.thebusinesswomansnetwork.co.uk

When you purchase a domain name from one of many online traders, they will give you the opportunity, sometimes at an additional cost, to purchase a business email address; so ours are things like this: Lisa@thebusinesswomansnetwork.co.uk

Seems simple enough, you now have an email address purchased and ready to use, but what on earth do you do next?

There will normally be two options for you; to purchase simple email forwarding, not advisable in most cases as this is a simple forward to an email account and will not allow you to send from your domain. The second is a mailbox, with this option you should be able to view your account from a web page, via an email client is a desktop application such as Microsoft Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, Eudora or Apple Mail. Or finally to sync with your mobile device so you can always access your emails when you are on the go.

Your DNS changes

So when once you have purchased your email address, the domain name needs to have some rules set in order for the email account to become active. This is done via the DNS (or Domain Name Server) settings. This can seem pretty scary as this is the information that shows your website where to look in order to be live on the world wide web, so changes to this can break the site if the are done incorrectly. So let’s take a look at what the DNS dashboard will look like…

DNS Entry	Type	Priority	Destination/Target
@	MX	10	mx0.123-reg.co.uk.
@	MX	20	mx1.123-reg.co.uk.

The priority settings are a simple back up for the email servers, so if at any one time Priority 10 is not functioning then your email will automatically swap to Priority 20. This is ideal to minimize downtime for your business through lack of email communication!

The type MX refers to the Mail Exchange and the Destination Target is the mail server address of the company that you have purchased the email from. At this point I am assuming you are not asking someone else to host the emails for you.

So now let’s take a look at how you can set up your email on your computer, and in this example we are looking at a domain purchased through 123reg but most are very similar in their workings.

First of all, you will need to open your email client for example Microsoft Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, Eudora or Apple Mail. Then you need to add a new account to your email program. The exact way of doing this will vary depending on which program you use, but you usually need to find the add new email account option.

You will need to check on the site you purchased your domain from for specific instructions for a variety of email clients, although armed with the information below you might be able to set things up yourself.

Whatever Email client you are using you will need to add a new email account and you’ll be asked to supply some details. This is the information you are likely to be prompted for by your email client are as follows:

Username: This is the full email address (e.g. yourname@yourdomain.co.uk)

Password: The password for the mailbox

For POP3:

Mail account type: POP3

Incoming mail server (POP): pop.123-reg.co.uk

Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.123-reg.co.uk

For IMAP:

Mail account type: IMAP

Incoming mail server (IMAP): imap.123-reg.co.uk

Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.123-reg.co.uk

So what is POP3 and IMAP?

Post Office Protocol version 3

By default, POP3 stores your email on the mail server until it is downloaded by your email client or mobile device. When the email is downloaded onto your computer it is deleted from the server and you cannot view them using webmail or other clients.

Internet Message Access Protocol

IMAP is the more advanced email choice for today’s modern world. It allows you to download your emails using webmail, your email client and your mobile device, where each will show all of your emails concurrently, deleting an email from one will delete from all.

So what is a catch-all account?

A catch-all will ensure that all email sent to your domain name will be forwarded to your mailbox or chosen forward email address – it literally “catches-all” email.

In short, when you buy your domain, make sure the company has a decent online support to help you set this up, just in case there are any problems! Most reputable providers should have simple instructions to help achieve the set up without too much difficulty or better still if you ask nicely, they may well reconfigure your DNS for you!

We hope this article helps you consider your email set up. If you are having any problems or would like further advice, just get in touch via info@thebusinesswomansnetwork.co.uk or post to our confidential  mastermind group where we will add additional learning.

Our mastermind group is only £5 a month and is packed with advice and resources to grow your business. Best of all because it is confidential it means you can ask anything and get treated with respect and have business owners like you share advice. Due to the way that the Insiders work together it is a powerful way to grow your business with high quality advice and great market research opportunities too. You can join here.