You may not think that your email address makes much difference in your real estate success, but you would be wrong.
While it’s never been a great idea to use a free email address like [email protected] as your business email, thanks to some changes by Google and Yahoo in 2024, it may not be a best practice to use your broker-provided email either.
Here are 6 reasons you should use a custom email address for your real estate business.
Reason #1: It Shows You’re a Professional
There’s a lot of competition in real estate. It’s super easy to find an agent online or stalk an agent who’s been referred to you. It’s more important than ever to do everything you can to look like a legit professional and stand out from the crowd.
An email address like [email protected] doesn’t show clients that you mean business. It makes you look like real estate is your side hobby. Like you’re selling something on Etsy.
But real estate isn’t your side hustle. It’s what you do for a living. It’s your chosen career. Having a custom email address shows your clients you are a true professional who cares about their business.
Reason #2: It Builds Your Brand
A custom email address is also a great way to build and reinforce your brand. Every time someone emails you, they get a little reminder of your brand. If you’re using your broker-provided email, whose brand are they seeing? Not yours!
When you use an email aligned with your domain, they’re also reminded of your website every time they see it. This makes it easier for your clients to remember which, in turn, makes it easier for them to recall it when they want to share it with someone. (This is also one reason why having your name in your domain can be a smart move.)
If your email is [email protected] but your domain is codysellsportland.com, they don’t match. It does the opposite of helping people remember because it creates confusion.
It’s a much better idea to have your email something like [email protected] and your website domain be codymartens.com. Every time someone sees one, it’s reinforcing the other.
Reason #3: It Ensures Your Emails Get Delivered
It can be easy for someone with the ability to spoof your email address. So much so that last year Google and Yahoo announced they would be implementing some inbox protections in early 2024 aimed at reducing spam and spoofing.
One of the main protections they’ve started to mandate is that the domain name your emails are sent from is authenticated. This involves adding some DNS records to the domain to prove you are the rightful owner.
Every time you send someone an email, their provider (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook) checks your DNS records. If they can’t authenticate your domain, they may mark your email as spam, or worse, reject it entirely.
Even though these protections are meant for those who send more than 5,000 emails per day, it’s industry best practice to have these authentication measures in place for everyone. Email newsletter companies like Mailchimp, MailerLite, and others now require you to authenticate your domain before sending, no matter the size of your list.
This means you can no longer use emails from free domains like @gmail.com to send your email newsletters. It also means you can’t use your broker-provided emails like @kw.com or @exprealty.com either because you have no way to authenticate the domain.
Reason #4: It Unifies Your Team
If you are an agent with a team, using a domain email address means you can give each member of your team their own email on your domain. This not only helps keep your team brand consistent, but it also makes it easy for your clients to recognize their email because everyone has the same sending domain.
You can also set up catch-all email addresses or distribution lists. For example, you could have all leads go to [email protected] or all transaction-specific emails could come from [email protected].
Reason #5: You Own It
Have you ever switched real estate firms and had to get a new email address? It’s a royal pain. You have to tell everyone, remind them multiple times, and hope they don’t email you at your old address. It can be a huge disruption to your business.
When you have a custom email, you own the domain and the address. It doesn’t matter what company is behind you, your email stays consistent and you avoid any disruption. You don’t have to try and archive your old emails before they cut you off and you don’t have to worry about missing any emails that go to your old address.
Reason #6: It’s Cheap!
We recommend using Google Workspace to administer your custom email. It gives you all of the familiarity and ease of Gmail with the custom email address your business requires. Their base plan is only $6/month/user making it very affordable. Plus, if you use MailerLite to send your email newsletters (our top pick), you can save 15% off your first year.
Wrapping Up
A custom email address is a small, yet important part of your real estate business. It sets you up as a professional, helps build your brand, makes sure your emails get delivered, unifies your team, you own it, and it’s inexpensive.
Take ten minutes out of your day to upgrade your email to a custom domain. Your business will thank you.
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