What should my email address be?

If someone was willing to put your gallery name (nothing else) on little cards and hand them out to lots of churches, schools, accountants, doctors, dentists, and other businesses in your town, for free, would that increase the traffic in your gallery?

Many of you are missing out on a great chance to get some free advertising.

I was talking to a friend the other day about his plans to open a business.

“Ever heard of email?”, I asked. “The first thing you should take care of is email. I mean Number One. Before anything else.”

My friend said, “But I already have email.”

I said, “Pardon me? You HAVE email? Oh, I’m sorry. What’s your email address?”

To which he replies something like 087234@compuserve.com. That’s just about as bad as, FuzzyDuck@aol.com. I honestly can’t remember his address.

What’s up with that nonsense?

Does an email address like FuzzyDuck tell your clients ANYTHING about what you do?

It turns out that at this very moment I’m on an airplane on the way to Atlanta. I write most of these articles on airplanes. So when I was thinking about using a specific example here, I thought of Atlanta.

I have a client/friend in Atlanta with an excellent email address. I’m going to use him as a specific example (something tells me he won’t mind.)

One of his email addresses is Michael@sportsmansgallery.com His name’s Michael, by the way. Next time you’re in Atlanta, look him up and give him a hard time. He likes that.

Michael@sportsmansgallery.com

Now there’s a good email address. He owns The Sportsman’s Gallery and sells fantastic images (originals and prints) of hunting, fishing, and related outdoor sports. If you were looking for a print of a golden retriever in a hunting scene, for your grandfather’s birthday, might you go to someplace like “The Sportsman’s Gallery”? Or to a web site called www.sportsmansgallery.com?

Yep. Especially if you live in Atlanta.

Would you go to AOL?

Nope.

Would you think to send an email off to sportsmansgallery@aol.com on the off chance that there might be someone at the other end that could help you?

Nope.

Think about it. If you have a client that is looking for you, isn’t it easier for them to remember a useful email address like Michael’s than something “cute” or “generic”, like fuzzyduck?

“But the MSN email address is FREE”, said my friend.

“Not exactly”, I said. “Ever heard of ‘Opportunity costs’? An opportunity cost is when you MISS the opportunity to do something.”

“Like, if I go to the football game I’ll miss the opportunity to go to the ballet with my wife. That’s going to cost me, right?”, says he asked.

“No”, I said, “that’s just being stupid, ‘cause you know you’ll pay later. But if you have an ambiguous email address, you miss the opportunity to market your gallery every time you hand out a business card, or tell someone at your church, or your child’s PTA meeting what your email address is. These are potential customers!”

What’s more, many of these organizations (i.e. the PTA) print registers, or member lists, that now show email addresses. With a good email name, these little booklets can have your gallery name in them. No Charge.

When Michael gives someone his email address, they see Michael@sportsmansgallery.com right there. When someone reads his email address (even in a membership list) they might say, “Hmmm, the Sportsmans Gallery. Over on PeachTree? I’ve been wanting to go in there. I think I’ll drop around!”

If he had an address like sportsma@aol.com (because sportsmans@aol.com probably got taken about 10 years ago), he wouldn’t generate any extra traffic at all. Nobody is going to say, “Oh, sportsma@aol.com, I think I’ll drop in and have a look around.”

Even if you have an email name that makes perfect sense to you, others might not get it. Michael could have an email address like TSG@bellsouth.net. Even though he often refers to The Sportsman’s Gallery as TSG, an email address like the one above simply wouldn’t help him get any NEW business unless.

Another reason I like Michael’s email is that it has the word “gallery” in it. This is especially important when the gallery name is really just the owner’s name. Like if the gallery were the “William Smith Gallery” (there probably is one, but I’m not referring to a specific gallery here) you wouldn’t want to have an email like mail@williamsmith.com. Even though Bill Smith might get a kick out of having the domain name www.williamsmith.com, an email address of Bill@williamsmithgallery.com is better.

So, how do you get a “good” email address like Michaels?

This type of email address comes with a DOMAIN NAME. When you register a domain name, it can support an almost unlimited number of email addresses (though you may have to pay your hosting company more for the additional addresses.)

Michael registered the domain name SPORTSMANSGALLERY.COM, among others. With that domain, he can have LOTS of email addresses. Like info@sportsmansgallery.com, events@… Contact@… Bill@... Bob@… BillyBob@… You get the idea. Every time he, or one of his staff, give their email address to someone, the gallery gets a little extra publicity.

I was looking through a list of gallery email addresses the other day (we have a large list) and I couldn’t believe how many gallery owners and directors still don’t have a good, descriptive address. As a guess, I’d say less than 10% of the names had an email address that said something about the gallery. I find that unbelievable. And the fact that lots of folks don’t even have an email address I find even more astounding.

But what if you already have lots of friends, family, and customers that know your current email address? That’s easy. Get the new email address, with the good name, anyway. Then have all the messages from one email address automatically forward to the other email address.

For example, my normal email address is j@archer.com. I use this most of the time. But it’s not on my business cards, or in any of our advertising.. I have another email address at jarcher@masterpiecesolutions.com. And another at jarcher@masterpiecemanager.com. And about 20 others as well. Now you don’t suppose that I actually check email in 20 places every day, do you? ALL of my email addresses forward messages to me at the archer.com address. This means that if I check my email at that address, the email box has ALL of the messages that were sent to ANY of my email addresses.

Michael could have both his “good” email address and use the TSG@bellsouth.net address also (if, indeed, that was one of his addresses). So, once you have the new address, at your new domain, you’ll probably stop handing out your old email address. People will still be able to use it until you ultimately cancel it. You should send out a message to all your friends, family, and customers notifying them of the new address. After awhile, you’ll stop receiving messages to the old address. At that point, you can drop it.

What if you don’t live in Atlanta?

Michael also has a great web site at, you guessed it, www.sportsmansgallery.com.

This is a dynamic web site that always has his latest inventory on it. It gets updated automatically every time he brings a new piece of inventory into his gallery. He’s learned that using his web site as a promotional tool is WAY better than direct mail. He’ll tell you himself that he’s cut costs AND increased sales. Having a great web site is important, but not the topic of this article. Even if you have no desire to have a web site, you should register the domain name just to have the email account.

A domain name costs as little as $20 A YEAR. Where can you get any advertising cheaper than that? You can register a domain name in the next 10 minutes by going to www.networksolutions.com, or www.register.com (among others). A company like mine can also help you set up domain names and email addresses.

After you have the domain name registered, hosting the name should be very inexpensive when compared to pretty much any other type of advertising.

Here’s another benefit of using email at your own domain address. If you switch hosting companies, you take the domain name, and your email address, with you to the new hosting company. You’re no longer handcuffed to the one hosting company.

So what are you waiting for? It’s time to get up off your ….. and DO SOMETHING.

Hey, that might be a good idea for another article.