There's a level of professionalism that comes with having an email address that matches your jewelry store's domain name. Additionally, as the store owner you are able to control how your employees communicate with customers.
When you assign employee email accounts, for example sue@jewelrystore.com, you can control what computer Sue uses the email on, and if she reads the email on her smartphone. Of course you can also change the password and still continue reliable communications with customers long after Sue's left your employ.
As a business, even though you might find it initially difficult, you should force yourself to use an official email address instead of Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or one given by your cable provider. Here are some quick good reasons:
1. It's more professional. Using sue@jewelrystore.com provides automatic proof that Sue actually works for the store. Anyone could create jewelrystore.sue@gmail.com, and therefore harm your store's reputation.
2. Security. You control the account, and your employee handbook and/or employment contract should stipulate that you, the jewelry store business owner, are allowed to read their email at will.
3. More reliable. Well, it's supposed to be more reliable, but honestly it's only as reliable as the email server that controls your emails. You could host your emails on your own in-house server, or you can host them with another company.
4. More flexible. Other than using personal names for emails, you could also create masquerade email accounts that forward to you or to any employee on duty. Some examples include info@, orders@, sales@, repairs@, and custom@. You don't need 5 different email accounts; you just need to create alias settings.
This all sounds good, and perhaps you are nodding your head in agreement. But let's call attention to the real reason why we decided to write about this specific topic in this Daily Golden Nugget. Actually it's because of reason #4 above.
We feel there is a real business advantage to having multiple email addresses for different purposes, but you don't actually need multiple email accounts. Each real email account requires someone to set up another account in Thunderbird, Outlook, or on your smartphone.
Between 3 and 5 years ago it was normal for a jeweler to set up an info@jewelrystore.com email account and point all website related comments and questions to that address. The problem is that no one would actually read that email account and the jewelers would lose sales opportunities weekly.
Take the time to reevaluate how all your email addresses are set up. If you set up all your accounts more than 3 years ago it's very possible important emails are getting missed.
Call your IT guy or website provider and just check it out. This is important.
