email

Why, oh why do so many people still insist on using their ISP (Internet Service Provider) allocated email address for the business email, when they have a perfectly good domain name they could be using to push their branding?  If you aren't sure what I'm talking about, I'm going to point at a real life example, and explain why you should be doing it if you aren't already.

I'm looking at the contact page on the Options Communication Therapy Centre website.  You will notice they publish their email address as optionsctc@iprimus.com.au.  Their domain name is optionsctc.com.au.  Why not have info@optionsctc.com.au?

This is where some people say - "We've been using the iprimus email address on all our literature, if we change our email address, we'll miss the mail going to the old address."  That's incorrect.

By setting up a forwarder, from say info@optionsctc.com.au to optionsctc@iprimus.com.au they could start using the new domain branded email address, while still only having to check the iprimus ISP address.  In fact there would not have to be a change in the way the business checks their email at all.

So now there isn't the missing email concern, since the company will still receive email to both email addresses in the exact same place.  The next hurdle is why should they bother?

Apart from the extra branding this will provide, by introducing and promoting the domain branded email address as the preferred email address, the company is no longer locked into their ISP.  If they find a better ISP deal, their account is terminated, or their ISP goes out of business, they can move, and just redirect their email address to the new ISP mailbox (or any other mail server for that matter).  It's a fail-safe plan for their email.