By Barry McCoy

To gain an online presence through a website, blog, and the various Social Networks, usually involves having a registered domain name. Most professional businesses choose a domain name that reflects their primary business name or the likeness of the business.

Domain names identify the company on the internet, as well as identifies the company in all email correspondence back and forth. Having email accounts that identify the account holders as from the business is very professional, as well as being safe.

However, there are still a large amount of businesses that continue to use the "FREE" email services as their primary means of cyber correspondence to their clients, prospects and employees. There is nothing wrong with the Free email providers, including Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, to name a few. They provide a lot of free space and a lot of gimmicks that have some wonderful value.

The reasons for using Free email are numerous, with the most being to filter and capture spam and junk email. Others like the free features included, as well as the ease of use of these services. Google, for example, requires a Gmail account, usually tied to a Gmail email account to use the great services that they have available.

But, the biggest drawback to using the free email services goes back to the core reason a business got on the internet in the first place - to Gain Exposure and an excellent way to give information and details about the respective company.

Think about it, you have a great business and a beautiful website that gets a lot of impressions and visitors from the various search engines. You have a Contact Us page that requests contact information from your prospects and visitors. A visitor completes the Contact Us form and gets emails from your business, but the email address you use is mybiz22221@yahoo.com or a similar email address.

Do you really think that your prospect is going to open that email, especially if he is getting hammered with junk and spam email all the time from people they don't know? The chances are very high that they won't open the email.

Therefore, here are some key reasons why businesses should NOT use FREE email accounts for business use:

Professionalism - this is your business and identity and not the free email providers identity. How can a potential customer or prospect really take you serious when your email account does not really reflect your real company?

 
You Get What You Pay For - ever have problems with free email and try to get support and help? Since the service is free, companies are not going to put support on it's priority list.

 
Technical and Deliverability - If there are technical issues with the free email provider, your emails may get lost and never retrieved, leaving you with no one to go to for support most of the time. But, more seriously is the fact that a lot of emails from Free providers are flagged as SPAM or Junk, just by the email name itself.

 
The Fine Print - did you really read all the fine print and Terms of Service when you signed up for the Free email service. These companies clearly state what you can and can't do,yet, they fail to have any real enforcement channels for abuse.

There are many other reasons, but the above summaries the reasons why a business should avoid using the free providers.

If a business does not have a registered domain name by now, they face prospects and clients not taking them very serious, or in fact, ignoring them totally.

With the cost of Domain names as low as free, all business owners should have a domain name that identifies that company - and corresponding emails that come with that domain name. A domain name allows a business owner to have departments, individuality and more with a yourbiz.com rather than the free emails. For example, you can have "sales@mybiz.com", or "support@nybiz.com", or "you@mybiz.com".

One last point, you can now send and retrieve emails in most Free Email providers platforms through POP mail functions or other related ways. This is in addition to using Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and others as the platform for sending and receiving emails.

So, if a business likes the Yahoo! Mail or Gmail interface, they can use those company's interfaces to send and receive emails from "you@mybiz.com" rather than "mybiz22221@yahoo.com", etc.

Barry McCoy is a Management and Marketing Consultant that specializes in Mobile Marketing and Local Online Advertising. As a Global Team Leader with BizAdPros, we help business owners and entrepreneurs build online exposure as well as provide strategies and systems to build and increase marketing databases of clients and prospects.

For more information, visit http://www.bizadpros.com