An email address is the most fundamental form of your online identity. It allows you to send and receive emails with anyone, create an account on various websites or applications, receive email newsletters from interesting sources, accept critical notifications, apply for jobs, etc. it’s quite common to see “cool” or “hip” email addresses that were created several years ago when users were in high school or college, such as “cooldude86@aol.com“, ” crazypunkmaster999@yahoo.ca” or “anna2cute@msn.com“. however, these identities are a terrible idea when you’re using your email account for anything remotely professional. Whether you’re looking for a job, running a business, or building your network, you absolutely need a professional email address.
A good professional email account used on a resume or business card packs a punch without coming off as an eyesore. While there is no law that prevents you from using your high school email account, it will almost certainly do you more harm than good and you will most likely be fired by recruiters and hiring managers. In this article, we’ll explain what makes up a good professional email address format and also give you some great ideas and examples on how to create a professional email address.
how to create a professional email address?
There are several email service providers available on the internet that will allow you to sign up for a professional email address. While you can create a professional email account on services like Gmail, iCloud, Outlook, and Yahoo, there are also other great options like Fastmail, Protonmail, and Zoho Mail. Many of these email service providers offer paid plans that allow the use of a custom domain name, which is especially helpful when you run your own business. Using a professional email address with a custom domain name gives your business that much more clout. scroll down a bit to learn more about using a custom domain for a professional email address.
Unfortunately, the internet has several billion people online. this makes it very difficult to get a professional email address of your choice. These days, it’s nearly impossible to get an email address in the format firstname.lastname@domain.tld. If you’re stuck in the same boat, here are a few different ways you can try to get a professional-looking email account.
tips for creating a professional email address
Although creating a professional email address is not a difficult task, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- keep it short: Don’t make your professional email address too long. if you have a very long name (as I did), use a shorter version that is easy to remember.
- make it pronounceable — there will be times when you have to read your email address out loud to someone, either over the phone or in person, and therefore you should try to make your professional email address as pronounceable as possible. there’s no way anyone could understand my last name, so I shortened it to “drk” in one of my email accounts.
- avoid diacritics, even if the spelling of your full name name uses a diacritic or accents, you should avoid using it in your email address.
professional email address format
The most standard and recommended form of a professional email address is, of course, the format firstname.lastname@domain.tld. but there are other ways to get a professional email address, like:
- initialname.lastname@domain.tld
- initialnamelastname@domain.tld
- firstname.initiallastname@domain.tld
- firstnameinitiallastname@domain. tld
- name@domain.tld
- last name.name@domain.tld
You can also use an underscore to separate names, although a period is more commonly used these days. In general, it’s best to avoid numeric characters in your business email address, but you can use them if the situation calls for it. Additionally, some websites recommend including your city, profession, or skill set in your professional email address. We don’t think this is a good idea, and we generally discourage this practice. your career path may take you to different places and your skill set will evolve over time, so jason.newyork@gmail.com and jason_accountant@gmail.com will quickly become undesirable.
examples of professional email addresses
here are some great examples of professional email addresses to draw inspiration from. Although there is no fixed set of rules to follow, it is recommended that you follow one of these formats. Let’s take the example of two imaginary people: jason smith and jessica graham-cumming
- jason.smith@domain.tld
- jasons@domain.tld
- jsmith@domain.tld
- smith.jason@domain. tld
- smithj@domain.tld
- jessicagrahamcumming@domain.tld
- jessica.gc@domain.tld
- j.grahamc@domain.tld
- jgcumming@domain.tld. tld
- gc.jessica@domain.tld
- jgc_jessica@domain.tld
using a custom domain for a business email address
If you have a successful business or just started one, it’s considered a good idea to use a custom domain name for your email account. Think about it, if you are selling a service or any product to a prospective client, what would you rather have printed on your business card? yourcompanyname222@gmail.com or sales@yourcompanyname.com? A custom domain name instills confidence in your prospects that you are serious about their business and not a passing pop-up.
Most of the time, the custom domain name used for your business email address is just the primary domain name you use for your business website, but it can be different in some cases. These days, it’s fairly easy to set up an email account with a custom domain name, and most email service providers will offer you the option of a custom domain when you sign up for a paid plan.
There are several good email providers that offer business email hosting. Google’s g suite offering is arguably the most popular business email service, along with microsoft’s office 365, fastmail, zoho mail, etc.
If you have multiple departments within your company, the format of your business email address will be similar to:
- sales@yourcompanyname.com
- support@yourcompanyname.com
- hr@yourcompanyname.com
- jobs@yourcompanyname.com
For employee email accounts, as we explained the format for professional email addresses, it’s a good idea to follow one of the following formats
- firstname.lastname@yourcompanyname.com
- first name@yourcompanyname.com
- firstname@yourcompanyname.com
However, if you are a small business and do not need a large number of email accounts, we recommend setting up hello@yourbusinessname.com, which can be used as a multi-purpose email account for general inquiries, sales, support emails, etc. “hello” is a universally recognized greeting and works well here.
once you’ve set up a professional email address, you can start using it to its full potential with the spark email app.
download spark for free and switch to the best email experience. If you have a company with two or more people, check out spark for teams.