It's amazing how many business people still use old email methods which were created for domestic, rather than professional use.
You have a website, which means you have a domain name .... which means that your email addresses should be [email protected]
(Remember, that you should have specially-created email addresses for publication on your site - see here).
Please forget Hotmail, gmail, Yahoo and AOL - you are a grown-up now! We sometimes are asked by clients if we can have their domain-based email forwarded to their Hotmail or AOL account - yes, of course we can do that, but it's extremely unprofessional. In fact, it could mean that emails you send out can be missed by the people you are sending them to. Here's why:
Let's say I send an email to [email protected] (as an example) asking for a reservation, or maybe I'm a member of the press wanting to feature you in a magazine, or a TV producer wanting to feature your restaurant. Naturally, I expect a reply from [email protected], yes?
Most people today, especially media and other professions, get hundreds of emails a day - and a lot of them are junk. A lot of them are deleted without being opened. I certainly delete a good 50 emails every day without reading them. This is usually because they are from an email address I don't recognise. Remember that, apart from the junk mail aspect, people will delete mail from unknown addresses for fear of the threat of viruses.
So, I am a TV person, wanting you to appear on my high-profile, peak-time TV show. I write to [email protected]. And I'm expecting a reply from that address. If I receive an email from [email protected], I am likely to delete it. I don't know that email address and it's certainly not an email address I have ever written to.
Delete.
So, you don't get your chance to appear on my TV show .... just because you didn't use a professional email address. I wonder how many other opportunities you've lost?
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