Most businesses realize that they need an email address in order for people to be able to reach them online. Small businesses usually have one generic email address to manage all email communication. While this may be suitable for some businesses for others it may be quite restrictive. The problem becomes apparent when the business experiences growth or a great increase in communications. Someone then has to sort through various emails addressing various topics in a single inbox and determine appropriate follow-up actions. This can lead to more administrative work that diverts attention from core business functions to managing emails.
When one size does not fit all
As much as a business may desire the simplicity of a single email address, whether this is the right solution is a question that needs to be asked. Who will have access to this single email address? Are any of the emails received of a confidential nature? Are emails overwhelming people who they do not directly pertain to? Businesses tend to departmentalize work in order to be more efficient and utilize resources effectively. Email addresses can be departmentalized in the same way regardless of whether a business has 1 employee or 20.
Generic plus personalized
Many enterprises allow all employees to have a personalized business address to conduct business activities. The benefit of this approach is that it allows for personalized communication and the generic company email address can be avoided if the customer already knows who the information needs to be addressed to. This encourages the building of relationships between customers and the business which seems more natural than an email to a random company representative. Those who know who they want to communicate with can email them directly while a generic business email is still available for general inquiries. The business can publicly advertise the generic email address and selectively distribute individual personalized email addresses if they so desire.
Group Email Addresses
Another alternative to using a single email address is to use group addresses which departmentalize emails. The sales team can have a single email address while customer support can also have a different email address. This helps customers in deciding which department that they should address and speeds up the processing of emails. It also allows the customer to specify the functional group of the business they intend to respond to the communication. Allowing the customer to do this sorting for you allows you to focus on other tasks such as following-up on the emails.
Where your website comes in
One of the great things about creating a website is that it comes with the option of creating business email addresses that use your business domain name. SeizerStyle Designs can therefore create email addresses using @seizerstyle.com. This allows us to add our branding to our email addresses and also serves to help people remember our website address. If you already have a website or are thinking of creating one remember that an additional benefit of your website is that it allows you to departmentalize your email addresses. This can help reduce the stress of email overload and allows you to prioritize certain email addresses more than others.