In representing your municipality online, every detail counts and each choice affects how people will perceive it. Having a branded email address is a choice that should go without saying if you want your organization to look professional. If you are still using generic email addresses with free email providers, think about the fact that, with one simple change of your email services, you can greatly improve your municipality’s image.

Many municipalities use free email accounts like Gmail, Yahoo or AOL. Switching to a branded email account has many positive sides for government organizations, which is why TownWeb recommends utilizing all the benefits of a branded municipal email address and a professional email hosting provider. 

What are Branded Email Addresses?

Simply put, whenever your email address ends with the name of your municipal website domain, that is a branded email address. Here are two examples of branded email addresses for municipalities: [email protected] and [email protected] Both of these municipal email addresses say a lot – they feature the name of the town as well as the person or title you are emailing. Take a look at why businesses and organizations prefer using branded email addresses to generic ones.

Most Important Benefits of Having a Branded Email Account

• Separate personal email from government email. It’s easier to focus on work and manage emails if they are only related to your job. In addition, since these emails are part of the public information, your personal emails will be safe from public eyes should anyone make an Open Records request.
• Trustworthiness. Having an email address that has the domain name of your municipality in it gives a sense of trust to everyone communicating with you. Anyone can make an email account with one of the popular free email providers, but only people who actually work for your organization can use a branded email address.
• Security. You don’t have to worry about the loss of important data, security issues or lost contacts whenever people change positions or leave. With departmental and branded email addresses, everything will be safe in one place.
• Professionalism. By creating a professional email address, you can control how your municipality is perceived in public. There can be a lot of funny, not to say embarrassing, personal email addresses (we’re sure you are familiar with some of them!), but they are better left for personal use.
• Brand-awareness. In communication, your branded email address will always act as a promoter of your municipality and its brand by displaying the name of your website.

Additional Advantages of Using Branded Emails

Companies that provide branded email addresses also offer better capabilities and features for organizations. For example, they will provide you with live support whenever you need it. They take extra care that your webmail remains active and constantly backup all of your data in order to secure it. In comparison with free email providers, they offer larger mailbox sizes and larger attachments. They have advanced systems of reducing spam and filtering unwanted messages. Ultimately, the companies that offer professional email addresses focus on helping businesses and organizations manage their emails better and more easily. If you need a recommendation, TownWeb’s provider of choice is Rackspace.

What makes Rackspace special?

Rackspace is one of the most famous branded email providers with extensive expertise and powerful options. With Rackspace, you can get some amazing features:

• Email @ your domain
• Secure POP/IMAP connection plus Webmail
• Outlook, webmail, and mobile access
• 24x7x365 live support for email
• 100% uptime guarantee
• Backup and retrieval (up to 14 days)
• 25GB mailboxes and 50 MB attachments
• Unlimited aliases, group lists, and forwarding
• Free and easy migrations
• Users can reset their own password
• Email archiving with unlimited storage and retention

Peek Inside Rackspace

See what this email hosting provider looks like and experience the possibilities! A glance into all of the six sections that will help you simplify your day-to-day activities.

1. Email: This section has all the features necessary for smooth correspondence and tracking of emails. Check your inbox, draft messages, sent messages, spam, and trash, and view your emails properly in a clean and simple interface.
2. Contacts: Have all your contacts in one place and reach them quickly. Easily import and export contacts, sort your contacts list, add new contacts, update existing ones and make groups.
   
3. Calendar: Organize your time by creating events and having them systematized in your email calendar. You can also share your calendar with others and import events. View your daily plans, focus on the work week, a whole week or have an overview of the whole month with a single click!
4. Tasks: Jot down tasks as they come to you so you don’t have to search through emails every time. Make a checklist with due dates to manage your time efficiently and never forget about obligations.
5. Notes: Write all important info that will be relevant for you in the future and save it in the notes section so that you can view and edit it at any time.
6. Chat: Interact with other people in your network quickly and efficiently. With instant messaging at your fingertips, you can effortlessly communicate and collaborate with your colleagues.

Simplify your operations with this easy-to-use, cost-effective and efficient way of managing email correspondence, all while increasing your brand awareness and making sure that you are perceived as trustworthy and professional.

Send The Right Message Every Time You Communicate By Email

When it comes to branded email addresses, you should not think twice about changing all of your business email accounts to uniform branded addresses. Whether you choose Rackspace or some other email provider, you should have in mind that this seemingly small change will influence your municipality’s image and brand in a positive way and maybe solve some issues you never even knew existed.