Most people have an email address nowadays. Without one, you wouldn’t be able to make any accounts online, communicate with people/businesses via email, and lots more, which is why almost everybody has an email address.
You may have noticed that personal email addresses often end in @hotmail.com, @gmail.com, or another email provider, as these are free to use and offer everything that somebody may need for personal email use. Professional email addresses often end with their own custom domain, for example, ours ends in @weavestudios.uk.
So why do companies do this? That’s exactly what we’re going to cover in this article.
What is a custom domain?
For businesses to stay consistent across all media forms, they focus on making sure everything links back to their branding. This can include any graphic designs they publish, documentation and letterheads they create, and lots more.
To keep to their branding, lots of businesses invest in a domain name that reflects their business name or branding. A custom domain is the domain name for a website. By owning a custom domain name, you can also use that as the domain for your email addresses. This is often referred to as an ‘email suffix’, but it uses the domain name for this.
To better understand how a domain name can also be an email suffix, let’s take a look at an example:
Here’s our domain name for our website: weavestudios.uk
And here’s our email suffix: @weavestudios.uk
As you can see, they both use the same domain name, however, one is used for our website and one is used for our emails. This keeps our branding consistent across our digital presence and helps us to demonstrate our credibility when contacting others via email.
Buying a custom domain doesn’t have to be costly – there are lots of expensive custom domains out there, but also lots of affordable ones too. By investing in a custom domain, it means you own the domain, and you have the rights to it so long as you keep on top of the necessary payments.
A common misconception is that to have a custom domain, you need a website. The good news is that you don’t! You can invest in a custom domain early on, use it for your emails, and then use it for a website down the line if that suits your business best.
To learn more about domain names, why not take a look at our article What is a Domain Name? How to Find the Best One for You?
Why businesses should use email with their custom domain
There is a wide range of benefits that come with using a custom domain for email. To help you understand some of these benefits, we’ve collated some of the key ones below.
Professional email address
A custom domain allows employees of a business to send an email from a custom suffix with the company branding, immediately being recognisable to the recipient. In today’s world, this is important as company email addresses that use generic email suffixes often don’t look professional and can raise concerns with the customer. Many scammers use generic email addresses, some people often look at the email senders address when trying to determine whether an email is genuine or not.
Control over email hosting
If you have a custom domain for emails, you’ll need somewhere to host your emails known as an email server. And that’s great news! It gives you plenty of flexibility to find a hosting plan that works for you, allowing your business to keep costs low whilst keeping the important things online.
By using a generic email address, you’re tied into that service and won’t be able to migrate to other hosting providers, which can prove tricky when growing a business.
Why not read our ‘What is Website Hosting?’ article too?
Better credibility
When receiving an email from a business, being credible is one of the crucial elements of a good first impression. If your email raises any concerns or could be perceived as not genuine, it makes it very difficult to continue to engage with that customer via email and build rapport with them.
Having a custom domain in place demonstrates your credibility and that you are trustworthy, making it more likely for customers or prospects to open your emails and engage with you.
Better response rate
Because a custom domain can demonstrate credibility in an email, it can also lead to a better response rate for emails. If people have no doubts about the validity of your emails, they are more likely to engage with you and respond.
Branding consistency
As a business, keeping consistent with branding is important to be recognised in the same way across all forms of media, and emails should be no exception to this. By having a custom domain on your emails, your emails will represent your company as soon as they reach the inbox of your recipient, keeping consistent with your branding.
Why not read about Essential Branding Trends to Grow Your Business in 2021 too?
Improved digital presence
A digital presence is important for businesses to stay in front of their ideal customer. A good digital presence is consistent across all platforms, including email, which is why it’s important to keep consistent throughout every aspect of your customer’s journey.
As an example, if you have a great social media page and visitors then head to your website and see the same consistency, it can be a positive experience for the customer. However, if they then receive follow-up emails from a generic and unbranded email address, it can make them feel suspicious and question the validity of the business, even if you are genuine and mean well.
To learn more about why a digital presence is so important and learn some ways to improve yours, take a look at our article How to Come Out of Lockdown with a Strong Digital Presence.
To summarise…
Although you don’t need one, having a custom domain can be very beneficial for your business. Not only does it allow you to better present yourself and your business via email, but it helps to build rapport with your recipient – even before they open the email.
If you haven’t got a custom domain set up yet, it can be a worthy investment for your business and one you should certainly consider.
Here’s how Weave Studios can help you get your perfect custom domain
Buying a custom domain is an investment and one that you should take time to fully understand. Our team completely understands and are here to help you purchase your chosen domain through our trusted marketplace and are on hand to handle the technical side so that you can get up and running as soon as possible.
With many happy clients up and running with their chosen custom domain, we’re in a great place to help you get started. To learn more, contact our team today!