The Case for Employee Emails [E047]

Thank You To Our Partners, The Institute, AutoFlow, AutoLeap, Shop Dog Marketing, In-BoundWatch Full Video EpisodeEmail-Seriously!In many business conversations the first correspondence is often by email and it is NOT going away anytime soon. While YES email in general has MANY problems there are still professionals who are more responsive to emails than texts or phone calls.We’ll be talking about email in terms of impressions, practicality, and interactions.I’ll lay a few ideas out and then we’ll discuss some best practices for team ownership so email correspondence doesn’t result in dropped balls.Today’s WOTD is: EloquentWe’ll define our word - after we hear a word from our sponsors who make this show possible!adjective: marked by forceful and fluent expression, an eloquent preacher: vividly or movingly expressive or revealing, an eloquent monumentOn Making an Impression:In the aftermarket - and countless other small businesses - it is very common to see email interaction with people using public domain email addresses. This can be the casual: .gmail.com / .icloud.com / .yahoo.com | The older… @aol.com / @hotmail.com / @netscape.com.Or - what I will simply call “serious” emails - those that use their own custom domain names.While we ALL use some casual and older email suffix - I want to raise a few points to help you consider moving yourself or your organization to owning, maintaining, or providing your own email domain.There is just no denying the casual nature of the suffix, and it feels like an afterthought in business settings if you’re still relying on .gmail… Sending an email with a link from your shop? Best if it is not from [e-mail] you’re networking, applying for a job, or running a transaction - a more “serious” email suffix does appear more professional, stands out, and builds trust.Is it a game changer? Not always - but like any other feature of a business, it is a factor in how you are being perceived.Communication goes far beyond the words we use - and absolutely involves our outward appearances - even our digital appearance. With most every inbox - before every subject -is the address the email is from.On the older suffixes, it’s commonly joked about, but there are strong assumptions that if you have an AOL email address today in 2025 - you most likely no long care that “you’ve got mail” and you probably won’t check it either. Is it fair? No maybe not - but I can speak from experience on this. If you are working with a client using older emails like AOL - and you must email them - I’m a big fan of calling to let those individuals know to check their email… in most cases. If you’re offended by this and you use an AOL email - go ahead and send an email to [e-mail] and… be sure to leave me your number! In all seriousness - if we are engaging via email - it is almost always for a transaction or in some form of a professional capacity and less likely for personal correspondence…Which leads me to a best practice I’ve encouraged for nearly a decade.Create standardized company emails for EVERY employee.I came across a shop doing this just this morning. It is RARE to see this.EVERY employee in the shop that had a user in the system they all had an email address from the organization.Advisors and Techs!I’ve seen many shops that have communication specialists who are given a business email - but almost always the service specialists are using a generic email - often with some inappropriate names…Follow me on this.This goes well beyond appearance -staff that have a need to correspond with a vendor or partner are best to be doing so with an email that proves their employment.Why?Think about it.If you have individuals with their own emails functioning as established employees - do your vendors know when they are no longer employees? Businesses that provide employees with emails have 100% control over that email being disabled if the employee is no longer with the business.In our ever increasingly technological field- this has ramifications on a wide variety of partnerships, tool access, and security credentials. The sheer volume of applications and software platforms that you may need to manage logins with can be managed much easier if you know automatically - the email that they were granted access with.Which leads me to practicality:When I am working with people - they typically have to administrate users in some form.It is rare that a file is on hand with the proper contact records for an employee. In a recent example - there were some decent human resource records - and the owner used those to start logins. When the email verification (a necessary security measure today) went out - it was revealed that many of the people on the list no longer had access to the personal emails they had once upon a time provided to the organization.In all businesses - there is a need to communicate things ...