Every business, large and small, must communicate with customers real and potential to market its goods and services, communicate progress, and transact business in general. The most common means of communication is email. According to Joseph Johnson with Statista, more than 310 billion emails were sent and received each day in 2021. With that much communication being conducted via email, how important is it to use branded email versus personal email?
The experts will tell you, it’s crucial.
The branding, marketing and credibility boosts, increased accountability and security benefits and decreased legal risks of branded email accounts, make this an easy decision in setting up your business communications.
Promote Your Business, Not Someone Else’s
Decades ago, small convenience stores could get a free sign from beverage manufacturers, called privilege signs. This was a great way for the store owner to promote his business while attracting customers wanting said beverage. It was a good deal for everyone. But in 2021, when a Hubspot blog reports email marketing generates $42 for every $1 spent (a 4,200% return on investment)[1]The Ultimate List of Email Marketing Stats for 2022, Katrina Kirsch, August 13, 2021, why would you spend any of your precious marketing dollars promoting Google or Yahoo? The smart marketer wouldn’t.
Another consideration is that personal email accounts make the business look rather amateurish and perhaps even illegitimate. Imagine you receive two emails from banks promoting savings accounts. One email comes from Robert.Solid@mosttrustedbank.com. Another comes from yourmoneyismymoney$$@gmail.com. The savvy person will open the first, we hope. Branded email addresses lend credibility to your enterprise that simply doesn’t come from a personal email account.
Effective marketing also relies on staying top-of-mind for your customers. With branded email, you remind the customer who you are every time you send a message. The customer also sees exactly where he or she can learn more about you, more about your products and services, and how he can purchase right there in your email address – your domain is RIGHT THERE.
Increase Corporate Accountability and Strengthen Security
When you start your business, maybe it’s a side-hustle, personal email may be the easy choice. But this free email becomes unmanageable as your business grows. If you don’t give employees a company email address, they will use their own personal account and this can cause real headaches.
First, you don’t control this employee’s email account, you can’t monitor it for accuracy or adherence to company policy, you can’t trace or track it (more on this when we talk about legal risks), and, again, it doesn’t serve to expand your corporate image for your audience.
When you allow the use of a personal email account you don’t control, you essentially relinquish ownership of the customer and the relationship with that customer. When that employee leaves, the customer, the relationship, and any history is likely to go with them. In addition, you can’t track or trace email communications when a customer claims non-receipt of invoices, product or other information.
With branded email on your domain, you can redirect the departing employee’s email address to be received elsewhere, it reminds the recipient of who you are and what you do, and it also allows you to take control of software the employee may have signed up for when using it.
For example, said employee may have signed up for a graphic design software program using a personal email address, created numerous flyers and social media promotional material, and even distributed them. Once the employee leaves it may be difficult, if not impossible, to gain control of that software account and the company product in it. If the employee leaves under unpleasant circumstances, he or she might even threaten your business by using the product in a way that harms the company.
Further, email on your domain is more likely to have a mechanism to combat email viruses, phishing and other cyberattacks. A personal email account may not have the same level of protection you’ve set for your organization. One email virus sent to a personal email account opened on a company computer could endanger the whole network. Additionally, while your corporate policy may include security protocols such as regular backup, routine archiving, and other security mechanisms, personal email is not.
Branded Email Can Mitigate Legal Risks
If there are regulations covering your business (e.g., HIPAA), using a personal email account to conduct business means you will likely be found out-of-compliance. Emails sent and received via a personal account is not stored on company servers and, therefore, it is beyond your control. Discovery requests are then seriously compromised.
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The primary reason using personal email accounts for business purposes is problematic for discovery or FOIA requests is retention. Some industries, due to state or federal regulations, require records to be kept for a certain number of years. For instance, all emails sent to and from any Ramsey Consulting Services email account are archived for 10 years. We would have no way of retaining email messages in a personal account, since we do not control it. In some instances, failure to preserve business records, including emails, can expose a company to a claim of spoliation of evidence. However, since we do archive all messages, during a discovery request we would put a Legal Hold on our archive, which ignores the 10-year retention rule and keeps the messages in the archive indefinitely until the discovery request is complete. This ensures that no evidence is lost.
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In clear violation of compliance regulations, personal email is not subject to backup, archiving, security protocol or governance. In fact, Gmail can scan their users’ emails, including attachments. Their justification is to block malicious material but it threatens privacy – the company’s and the customer’s. A Barracuda blog entitled “The business risks of using personal email accounts”[2]The business risks of using personal email accounts, Dave Hunt, August 2, 2019 further outlines the legal risks.
Free email also has fairly weak recovery mechanisms making it vulnerable to non-employees or cyber attackers guessing credentials. With personal email accounts, sensitive client information or confidential company data is vulnerable to inattentive or unhappy employees sending it to unauthorized persons.
Branded Email is Too Expensive and Cumbersome – MYTH
A Verisign blog[3]4 Myths About Using A Branded Email for Business, Lorraine Stickley, December 15, 2017 says if you already use a service like Microsoft 365 or Outlook.com Premium, providers make it simple to create and use a branded email platform. According to Verisign, the cost and effort for branded email is low and often it can be bundled with the registration of a domain name or added later for a monthly fee.
Ramsey Consulting Services offers several business and IT security services that include platforms for domain names and branded email. Contact us today to learn how we will partner with you to help grow your business, establish strong security protocols, and mitigate risks along the way.
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