Even though you are starting up a business and most likely it’s just you and maybe one or two other people, there is no reason not to put in place the organisational structure that your business will grow into.

One way to do this is to create different email accounts to help you keep organised and to provide a familiar environment for your customers. Each email address represents an aspect of your business. Each email address is one of the hats that you wear each day, one of your many personas.

Lets start by saying that using your Optusnet, Telstra, Hotmail, Yahoo, or Google email address for your business is not a good look. You won’t look professional to your customers. In fact, I am very wary of emailing anyone with a free email address due to the number of scams that come from these types of services. Check out why I could never recommend a free email address in this post.

Using multiple email addresses helps you stay organised and keeps clutter down. If you are dealing with invoices and invoice enquiries then you only need to looking in one place. If you need to back track through emails to resolve an issue, then everything will be under the one email address.

Over time your business will grow to the point where you need to delegate some organisational responsibilities. You can simply hand over the email address for accounts or sales to your assistant and everything, including all the history, is there. Most importantly, your customers won’t have to change anything that they do. Your organisational changes will be transparent to your customers.

Here are some suggestions for the email addresses that you will need:

• yourname@yourbusiness

Use this address to add a personal touch to your communications. Customers like the idea that you are approachable.

• accounts@yourbusiness

This is used for all outbound invoices and inbound account enquiries.

• enquiries@yourbusiness

Use this as the address that your Contact Us form on your website will forward enquiries to. This makes it easy for you to see new enquiries and respond quickly. Customers don’t want to be left hanging when their enquiry gets lost at the bottom of your over-full inbox.

• sales@yourbusiness

This is where you make your money. When an email appears here it means a potential sale. This is why you are in business. This email address is one of your highest priorities.

• admin@yourbusiness

Use this for emails to your accountant, ATO, bank, and other non-customer business interactions.

• support@yourbusiness

If you are producing a product that may require after-sales support then this is the email address your customers will be looking for.

• subscriptions@yourbusiness

If you use email subscriptions to other people’s blogs or industry journals, you may want to have all of these come to one in-box so you can browse them easily.

Your business may not need all of these addresses but you can see how you can use multiple email addresses to cut clutter and allow future delegation of responsibilities.

This might look like a lot of addresses and you’ll be asking “How do I manage all that?” You’ll have to read this post to find out.