I have so many email accounts that I don’t even know some of them. The 3 free email accounts that I know of are – gmail, hotmail and inbox. And I know there are countless Yahoo! ones floating around that I don’t even remember the password to. Last time I checked my hotmail, I had my inbox filled with “find horny girls in your area” emails, which I obviously ignore cause I am married. Anyways, out with the rant and in with a simple but one of the most ignored personal branding tool – your email address.
I am not talking about the fact that you should choose your email address carefully. We all know that the email address “iwantyousobad@hotmail.com” that you used when you were sixteen certainly isn’t professional enough to email your clients with. What I am talking about is the domain itself. I understand that gmail is one of the most popular email services out there and that there are many things that you can do within and with it. However, why lose that opportunity to brand yourself. For example : If I am sending an email to a client or potential client which email address is better to use – ritubpant(at)hotmail.com or email(at)ritubpant.com. I think the second one is much better, wait, let me rephrase that, I know the second one is much better cause it helps me brand myself through my email address itself.
Anyways, those are my thoughts on using anything other than your own domain for email. Lately everyone is using gmail and pretty much every email I get is using gmail as their email provider. Think about it. It’s better to use your domain rather than gmail. Sure, you might have some limitations, but to gain a few things you’ve got to learn to lose a few.
What do you think? Am I talking out of my ass? If you think so, I am glad even my ass can make sense 
Hi, My name is Ritu. I am a member of SMA (Social Media Anonymous) ;-) & help bloggers and businesses utilize the social web. 
When I started reading your post I thought it was all obvious. Although it might seem an obvious thing to do I am sure not that many still don’t understand the potentials.
I wanted to add to your post that it’s not necessarily true that “gain a few things you’ve got to learn to lose a few”.
I used to have many email accounts and I used to check each one of them individually.
If you love using gmail you can set up things to let you send emails from gmail showing as sender whatever email address you want. Just go to your settings page, then go into “accounts and import” and set things in “Send mail as”.
Also you can make sure that you receive any email sent to your other accounts into your gmail. You can set up a forwarder email account. For example the email sent to name@yourdomain.com is forwarded to youraccount@gmail.com. Or you can simply add your email to be checked by gmail using POP. Create labels and add some filters and you will be in possess of a very powerful system to manage your email: all in one place!
Yep – I agree with you there!
Its also one of the first things we do with clients is get them off their johndoe103@yahoo.com email addresses and onto something more professional thats comes off thier website address.
@Martin : I think many people do forward their emails but for some reason instead of using the client they forward it to, the end up using gmail hah. it’s funny and then they end up sending email from gmail which kind of defeats the purpose.
@Andy : Absolutely!
I guess that is a conventional advice given by online marketers. I too have advised many of my clients.
In fact, we could take it a little further.
consult@doctor.com should convey some more meaning than mail@doctor.com
It may not be huge plus, but it sure is a minimal add-on.
yep – and hello at moogaloo.com is a lot more welcoming an email than info at moogaloo.com.
I have wondered tho about how the whole cloud computing thing will change this – I know a few people who’ve moved their email over to google to make it more portable.
Ritu,
I agree 100%. I switched everything except my business to gmail. I maintain the biz name for strictly biz, and other email for family friends, etc. And info at anything.com makes the delete key more inviting.
What limitations would you have to using your own domains email? I don’t see limitation to using your own domain, I see limitation when using Gmail, Hotmail, etc… You can even use your own domain with Gmail if you really like using Gmail. I suppose one limitation could be that your domain name could be longer than Gmail.
Certainly the second option of email address is more appealing to me too.