Why using a professional, personal email account is smart.

One of the very first things we do at Tech Concierge when working with a new customer is get their email in order.

This means making email instantly and totally reliable on all devices, making email perfectly and completely searchable with extreme accuracy, and doing all of this without notifying any of your contacts of any changes. I thought I should explain how we do this. But first, as always, let’s start with a little context:

Back in 2011, The Atlantic wrote a piece titled The AOL Email Address Debate: Stigma or Status Symbol? Ten years ago the focus was on what an aol.com account said about your personal brand. Are you old and tired? Gen X vs. Millenial? Even worse, boomer.

Seven years later, Inc. Magazine published an article called Does Your E-Mail Address Say Hipster, Professional, or Behind the Times? The article put forward the idea of owning your own email address, based on a domain name you own, is one you can take with you to any provider you want. The article didn’t get nearly enough attention, it was far too short, and it incorrectly and inaccurately made it seem that moving to your own professional, personal email would be disruptive. It’s not.

Fast forward to today, and email is still everyone’s achilles heel. Email is where most security threats originate. Email is the primary source of viruses. Email is where fraud happens. And free email services like aol, hotmail, yahoo and gmail aren’t reliable. They’re certainly not searchable. They’re spilling over with spam, and the more sites and services you sign up for with your free email, the more beholden you are to the company that provides the free email address. Your free email address is the ultimate hostage-taking marketing.

In 2006 my company was an early adopter of a new service that had recently come out called Google Apps for Your Domain. A few years later the service was renamed G-Suite, and then in 2020 it was rebranded Workspace. Basically, Google knew that businesses would want to use their domain name for email, so they made it simple for anyone, even as small as a company of 1, to use their own domain name for premium email and access to all of the Google ecosystem of apps. Premium email was different from gmail: No ads, complete privacy. Unprecedented anti-spam controls, virus and malware filtering, and dozens of other security features.

I had been using their premium email for over a year, and during that time, Apple’s mobile me email service had futzed out at least three times. I found my professional email (Google) was so reliable that, when Apple’s iCloud email service failed for the fourth time that year, leaving me without my personal email for over a day, I decided to jump ship. I registered a domain name, and created a Google Apps account for my family. 14 years later, I have zero regrets, and only gratitude for how amazing Google’s service has been.

Since 2007, I have worked with numerous executives who had old aol, yahoo and hotmail accounts. Invariably the discussion about their tech touches on email, and then I share with them my story about Google’s professional email service, a service designed to exceed Fortune 100 IT compliance requirements, but accessible even to an organization of just one person.

Switching to a professional, personal email account can and should be seamless. You do not need to notify anyone of your new email, because switching is a process, not an event. Your old email will continue forwarding to your new email for a period of time. Nothing will be lost. As you continue processing email, recipients will get used to your new email address. In some cases, I will add a note automatically before my customer’s signature that notifies all recipients of the new email address, and even offers a link to download an updated vcard, ensuring that everyone, regardless of PC or Mac, Android or iPhone, can update their address book with the new email address. Again, it’s not required, but it’s classy and professional to do so in many cases.

Email today is more important, more sensitive, and more critical than its antiquated ancestor, paper mail. And threats to data, privacy and security are at an all time high. Using a free email account is like replacing the custom front door on your house with a beaded curtain. So why do so many business owners and executives still use free email accounts, like hotmail, yahoo, gmail and aol? There are only two possible reasons: 1) Because they don’t know any better, or 2) they don’t care. That’s it. Hopefully this article changes that for a lot of professionals by eliminating the first reason.

Would you like help switching from a free email to a secure, professional personal email account? Contact me here. I would love to be of service.