Ten Ways Your Email Address Could Be Causing You Problems

Did you know that your e-mail address can speak volumes about you? How...you ask? I'll give you ten ways--let's count them down to my fave.

10) Crazy E-mail Addresses. In another life, I coached job hunters and wrote resumes for clients seeking jobs "under the radar." You'd be surprised what an e-mail address like "buffdude@...." or "hippychick@..." or "wildchild@..." will do to a perfectly decent resume. And, perhaps it would also surprise you to know that even bonafide professionals (like civil engineers) have addresses like these.

9) Generic e-mail addresses. No "dis" intended to gmail, yahoo, hotmail, and the like, but if you are in business or intend to be, get a professional e-mail address and link it up to your existing one, so that you are presented more professionally. I have a gmail account myself, and I also have an e-mail address that I set up years ago that isn't connected to my web site, but it's not one I promote.

8) Web-site e-mail addresses not connected to your main e-mail address. I simply cannot tell you how many times I've run across this situation. Chambers of Commerce (I'm on you guys all the time, but many of you still have "dead" e-mail addresses on your site.) I've seen corporations with actual job listings out that probably wonder why no one is sending resumes via their web site. Guess why? I've told this story a bunch and even wrote about it in my book, but it drives the point home: real estate agent who changed her e-mail address and forgot to notify her web site manager - three years! She probably wouldn't have known if I hadn't been doing some promo work for her and wondered why she wasn't responding to an e-mail I sent from her web site.

7) No e-mail address on your web site. Gotta bring this up, and I know a lot of you are smiling - thinking who would be crazy enough to put a web site up and forget to include an e-mail address. People who construct their own web sites using templates often forget the obvious. I've seen it happen, so be sure to have a separate pair of eyes check over your site for basics like this before you publish.

6) Hide and seek e-mail addresses. These are the e-mail addresses that aren't in plain view on a web site - it's like a scavenger hunt. An e-mail link should be on every page of a web site in an easily viewed location (preferably in first scroll).

5) Several different e-mail addresses on your site. I'm not talking about the pages with a staff e-mail directory, I'm talking about where there would be more than one e-mail address for a single- person company. There's no need for that if you are running the show. Don't confuse visitors.

4) Change-o-matic e-mail addresses. Now, we're getting into the fun stuff. I'm talking to those of you who change your e-mail addresses like you change your underwear. It is incredibly frustrating to people who try to keep you updated. I have an associate in my address book that has changed her address three times in the three years that I've known her. My poor contact management system is completely confused. Get one e-mail address and stick to it for a while.

3) Personal E-mail addresses that rarely get checked. Hey, I understand if you work for a government agency or something and need to keep a personal e-mail address for your own communication, but, check the personal one like you would your business e-mail. It's a method of contact (just like a P.O. Box) you opened up the minute you set it up. You really cannot just tell people that you don't check it often so don't send mail to the personal address. If you don't want others to send mail to it, then don't e-mail others from that address, because the recipient's contact system can automatically save that as your e-address. If need be, set up an e-mail signature to instruct as to which address you prefer used. The bottom line is that it's your own responsibility to manage your e-mail addresses.

2) Contact forms in lieu of e-mail addresses. This is perhaps a personal issue with me, but I have a policy of not filling out forms when I'm not asking for something in return. If all I want to do is ask a question or deliver a message, I don't expect to have to spend five minutes filling out a form and feeling unimportant. I'm not going to be entirely satisfied that the message would get to a live body. Okay-got that out of my system. But, really...I don't think I'm alone here, folks. If you're not offering anything special, don't make your site visitors fill out a form just to connect with you.

1) info@ e-mail addresses Ah - my fave! And, I know I risk offending some folks with this one, but, you have to understand, for three years, I reviewed over 1,000 web sites for a client. They were mostly tourist and hospitality sites all over the country. I experienced tons of "info@" addresses. My problem here is that so many of the addresses were dead or linked to someone who never checked that e-mail account that I developed a "no-trust" attitude about those addresses. I didn't get a warm-fuzzy from the company/org that owned the site, either. Too generic is simply too generic. I want at least think that there is a human there somewhere. Even if you lie to me with a debby@... address (and you have no Debby), I'd still prefer that over "info@."

In some ways, this was just a sort of exorcism on my issues around e-mail addresses, but it is important. Contact information is our link to the rest of the world and if we are businesses that own web sites, that's critical to our being able to survive. Of all things...that should be right.