When we shared the following information in a recent teleclass, a few of the participants were a bit ticked off about our comments on their choice of an email address for their business. Too bad, so sad… but it’s hard to be taken seriously in business with an email address like hornyboy@comcast.net (not a real email address).

So let us be very clear about the info you are about to read: ALL the recommendations we make here are to help you get more BUSINESS SUCCESS! Not more dates (see bad examples) or more sympathy (see bad examples).

People will conduct business with people they like and trust. Since they can’t see your face (in most cases) and shake your hand (in all cases if you’re marketing and networking online), one way to be "liked" and "trusted" is to give the impression of being a serious business person.

Just think about the BUSINESS impression you will make before you choose the email address you will include in your ads, articles, postings, etc.

On that topic, here are a few wise words of advice from Mike Dillard, a MLM guru and marketing genius;

"Understand that in network marketing, or any business for that matter, you are selling yourself FIRST. In actuality, people are much more concerned with you than they are with your opportunity or your products. With this in mind, understand that you are constantly being judged, sized up, measured, and compared to other businesspeople in your field or industry. People want to work with leaders, winners, professionals. Make sure you look the part!"

Here are some (real examples) of what we consider very good email addresses for BUSINESS:

[By the way, you will notice we will not use the @ symbol, but rather (at). There’s an excellent reason for that: you should NEVER put your email address with @ in it on your website because there are robots scanning the internet 24-7 to harvest email addresses. All they are "trained" to do is look for, find and collect the @. You can search our whole website and you will NOT find our email address anywhere with the @ in it. And we sure wouldn’t want to cause harm to the people whose (real) email addresses we are using below as examples.]

Back to very good email addresses for BUSINESS... These people use their own website’s email address which makes it look very business like and professional;

• LAndersson(at)OrganizedForLife.ca
• M.Armstrong(at)MattressDoctor.ca
• Kristin(at)ExtraordinaryTeam.com
• Janet(at)OrganizedAssistant.com
• Michael(at)HumourInTheWorkplace.com

and of course...

• Daniel(at)TheBizzBoosters.com
• Results(at)TheBizzBoosters.com

Also notice that in all of the examples people used their name, or something appropriate to the rest of the email address. Personally, we think info@yourbusiness.com is NOT a great email address. Every time we contact one of those, we get the strange feeling that our email is going to end up like one fish in a sea of email where maybe, if we are lucky, someone will catch it with their net one of these days and reply to it… maybe.

On the other hand, we feel good sending an email to Stephanie(at)SelfGrowth.com (as opposed to info(at)SelfGrowth.com). It might just be a matter of perception, but online, perception is pretty much all you’ve got.

The people below used their name, their imagination and good sense in the first part of their email address since they’re using the host in the second part (still sounds very business like, though not as great as the first examples above).

• KellyBouchard(at)aol.com
• MikeNovakEmail(at)yahoo.com
• BillionaireMind(at)gmail.com
• ADebtFreeLife(at)gmail.com
• TheMoneyDoctor(at)gmail.com

And of course, two of ours:

• SuccessfulBizFromHome(at)gmail.com
• Success.Partners.1(at)gmail.com

Here are some examples (the host has been disguised to protect the misinformed) of what we consider to be bad email addresses for BUSINESS:

• sunshineeyes79(at)yahoo.com
• yahwehispeace(at)yahoo.ca
• dot1dot2dot3(at)comcast.net
• hottotrot(at)hotmail.com
• loveless(at)earthlink.net
• singleandhot(at)yahoo.ca
• purplelover1968(at)yahoo.ca
• pawpaw1456(at)yahoo.ca
• voodoochild69(at)hotmail.com
• tarantula814(at)yahoo.com
• bigboymike(at)aol.com

Enough. We think you get the picture.

Again, this web site is a business site and we are recommending that for the purpose of doing more business, you stay away from "sunshine eyes"… even though she (or he) is probably a very nice person with lovely eyes…

A few more things:

PLEASE...
stay away from email addresses that take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to type, like;
• MichaelAllanSweitzenberglen (at) allyourmarketingtoolsforsuccess.com

Stay away from email addresses where you need a magnifying glass to decipher them (watch for the number "1" and the letter "l" as they could be very hard to differentiate in small print);
• angiel1l11(at)yahoo.ca (the first part is a real address)

Stay away from email addresses where you have to put your finger on the screen to follow each letter to make sure you’ve got it right;
• lslpspeierlspl1(at)gmail.com (the first part is a real address)

************

We used the word "designing" on purpose. That’s because that space at the end of all your emails is very valuable real estate and you don’t want to dump there too few, or too many, or inappropriate words that are not helping you in your quest to achieve more BUSINESS SUCCESS.

We’ll use Daniel’s signature as a good example (we did not say "perfect") of an effective signature:

Click here to see my signature as it appears at the bottom of my emails.

Here’s what we think is a good recipe (does not have to be in this particular order):

• Your name
• Your title and/or degree(s)
• Your email address where they can contact you DIRECTLY (if not the same as the FROM address they’ll see atop the email)
• Your phone number (Why not? Do you have something to hide?)
• (If it applies) The title of a book, eBook, eReport or Article you’ve written and published (to establish credibility)
• The name of your company
• Your "WHY-Proclamation" (that’s probably the most important element… If you don’t know what that is, make sure to get your Complimentary Copy of our bestselling eBook WHY Should They Do Business With YOU? where we explain WHY-Proclamations and HOW-Explanations in great detail. Here’s the link.
• Your URL (or URLs if you have more than one site)
• (If it applies) Invitations for your reader to join you in your social and business network(s).

What you do NOT want to put in your signature:

• an annoying commercial for your ‘business opportunity’ ("Are you looking for a way out of the rat race? Wanna make $1,000 a day, 24/7? Contact me, I will help you do that."). Makes you look amateur and hungry, not what I’m looking for in a leader...
   
• a quotation that, as profound and inspirational as it may be, is totally irrelevant to what you do, or sounds preachy or too "intellectual"...
   
• ... or even worse, a butchered quotation, or the name of the author misspelled—or both like in this example I saw recently; "You can get anything you want if you help people get what they want." Zig Zigler. The correct information is; "You can get everything in life you want if you help enough other people get what they want." Zig Ziglar.

************