It’s time to ditch your free e-mail account for a PROPER business e-mail

Alright, I’ll admit it, this has been one of my big hypocritical points for WAY too long – I always judge people by their e-mails. If someone has a Gmail account but is touting themselves as an expert or trying to sell me something, that always makes me skeptical. If someone has a Hotmail or Yahoo account and is offering anything requiring money, I’m probably not doing business with them.

Yes, there are obviously exceptions (I know tons of my fellow WAHM mamas are using free email accounts, and that is part of a small, handmade biz that I don’t think anyone would question) BUT, if you are building a BRAND, you need a proper e-mail. It is one of the simple things that will instill confidence and trust in your customers. It shows you are serious about your business and sets you apart from other makers.

So, taking my own (overly judgemental) advice, I finally upgraded to a proper e-mail with G Suite: Shanley@theCraftyBeaver.ca

A business e-mail is less expensive then you’d think!

I hate paying for things when there’s a good free alternative, and I have never had any complaints about my free email account service from Gmail. G Suite lets me keep all the functionality that I know and love, but also gives me access to a proper business email at my own domain.

When I first signed up with GoDaddy for this site, they gave me a free trial of their professional e-mail hosting. It was clunky to sign in to, and the regular price was $6.99 a user per month – no thanks! I figured G Suite was the same, so I kept putting off signing up, but when I saw they had a free two week trial, plus 20% off the first year, I figured what the heck.

Well, guess I should have read the fine print earlier because that $4 (CAD by the way!) gave me my CraftyBeaver.ca e-mail, plus let me add the domains for my two other creative businesses as aliases. This means I now have THREE professional e-mail addresses, all conveniently filtering into one inbox, for one cheap monthly fee.

It’s an easy and inexpensive way to affirm your branding, increase the authority of your online presence and make yourself feel like a real pro. Plus you get access to the other cloud-based G Suite tools, like Google Hangout, Drive, Docs and more.

Keeping Organized

To say my inbox was a disaster would be a TOTAL understatement – just this week I sorted and deleted over 1300 e-mails! I’ll be keeping my free Gmail accounts active for all the everyday stuff (mailing lists, social media notifications, freebies, etc) so my fancy new e-mails can be for customers and important contacts only. I’ve also set up some Gmail filters to automatically star and label any emails coming in for my other domains. If you’re using multiple domains you’ll have to add them to your main account before you can reply from them.

Are you ready to step up your online presence?

G Suite is regularly $5 a month after your two-week free trial, but you can get 20% off your first year if you e-mail me at shanley@thecraftybeaver.ca (so pro, right?!) for a promo code. I only have a few of these one-time use codes so if you’re interested hit me up!