“You never get a second chance to make a first impression” –1990’s Head & Shoulders Shampoo slogan
In today’s electronic world, email is frequently used for your initial contact with a prospective boss, customer or partner. The recipient’s first view of the email is usually in a list of emails with address and title columns. What they see there can make a strong impression. The email title is critical but writing titles is way beyond the scope of this article. Our topic is your email address and what it says.
First a quick review. Email addresses take the form “username@domainname”. The “domain name” typically identifies an organization with a web presence. The “username” identifies a user or member of that organization. Upper/lower case doesn’t matter in email addresses. You knew all that. Now let’s look at some hypothetical email addresses and see what they say.
abc.roofing@aol.com – This says “ABC Roofing is very small”. It says that there is one email address for the entire company. That implies either there’s only one person in the company or there’s only one computer user in the company. The domain name “aol.com” hints of limited computer expertise. AOL emphasizes ease of use and therefore attracts novice users. Gmail and Yahoo have more sophisticated email services oriented toward businesses and more advanced email users.
john.smith@gmail.com –This says that John Smith has an individual email account at Gmail and is using it for communication. Maybe John’s company doesn’t have a web presence or maybe John chose not to associate this email with his company. Maybe he works from home in the evenings when he doesn’t have access to company email. All in all, it doesn’t tell much. And that may be what you want. (By the way, Gmail and Yahoo accounts are free.)
johns@abcroofing.com – This says that ABC Roofing is technically sophisticated enough to have a domain name (abcroofing.com) and an email server. The use of first name and last initial for username indicates up to 50 email users. (After that, too many users with the same first name and last initial make longer email addresses more practical.) Larger companies typically use first initial, last name (jsmith) or first and last name (johnsmith or john.smith). You can get a domain name and email service for less than $20/year.
There’s no right or wrong here. The email recipient may not try to interpret your address at all. One way to de-emphasize your email address is to enter a display name followed by the actual email address enclosed in angle brackets (John Smith at ABC Roofing <johnsmith@gmail.com>). Your email program will probably let you set up a display name and format it for you automatically.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one other point of email etiquette. The title of your email should be well phrased and properly capitalized. Don’t use all capital letters to get attention. That’s referred to as “shouting” and is considered as rude as shouting during a conversation. The shouting rule applies equally to the body of your message. DON’T DO IT! (He shouted.)