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Is A Business Email Address Important For Dental Clinics?

You’ve already spent time and money to get a professional website built to market your dental services to your target audience, but you rely on Gmail, Outlook or (worse) Hotmail email addresses to communicate with new and existing clients.

Despite there being a huge variety of ways to connect with clients, email is still one of the most popular methods of communication. You might not realize it, but your email address also forms part of your company’s branding.

Think about this for a moment, where can you find your email address?

It’s probably on your:

  • Website
  • Printed stationery
  • Business cards
  • Marketing material
  • Company vehicles

It’s even on your email signature (which you should definitely have set up)!

Basically, your email address features heavily in most of your physical and online presence and it can be seen all over your business. It is therefore really important that you have an email address that represents your clinic, especially if you already have a website. Don’t just use a free email service like Gmail, Outlook, or Hotmail. This can make your company appear unprofessional and untrustworthy, which is definitely something you want to avoid in the dental industry.

Luckily, getting your own custom business email address has never been easier or more affordable. In fact, there is a free method and a low-cost method.

We’ll point you in the right direction.

How To Set Up A Business Email Address For Your Dental Practice

The Free Method For Setting Up A Business Email Address

Unless your website was created using a service like Wix or Squarespace, your website will be hosted by a web hosting company such as SiteGround, GoDaddy, or Bluehost. If your website was built using WordPress (our preferred platform), then your website is definitely being hosted by one of these companies.

Most web hosting providers offer email as part of your monthly or annual fees. All you need is an active account with a web hosting company and a domain name.

As there are so many web hosting companies, each with a slightly different method for setting up a business email address, we’ve compiled a list of instructions for the most popular web hosts. If your web host isn’t listed, don’t panic, just give it a Google.

Again, if your web host isn’t listed above, just do a quick Google search for something like ‘[insert web host name] set up email’. That should do the trick!

The Low-Cost Method For Setting Up A Business Email Address

The second option for setting up your business email address is using a paid service like G Suite.

G Suite from Google is a collection of productivity apps and collaboration tools. If you already have a Gmail account, you’ll already be familiar with the core products such as Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive.

With a paid G Suite subscription, you’ll have a larger online storage capacity, the ability to create a business email address, the option to add multiple alias email addresses, and much more.

We pay for G Suite at PatientBoost and recommend all our clients use it.

Here are the five steps needed to simply set up a G Suite account and get access to your brand new business email address for your dental practice.

  • Step 1: Create a G Suite account
    If you don’t already have a G Suite account, you can sign-up for a 14-day free trial.
  • Step 2: Set-up business email
    You can then set up your business email using the G Suite setup wizard.
  • Step 3: Set-up email aliases
    Finally, you can set up email aliases to forward mail to a single inbox.
  • Step 4: Update everything
    Update your business email address wherever it currently appears, e.g. website, printed stationery, business cards, marketing material, company vehicles, email signature, etc.
  • Step 5: Get sending
    Now everything is set up and ready to go, start using your new business email address as you normally would.

As previously mentioned, G Suite is a relatively inexpensive option for creating a business email address (and don’t forget all the other wonderful Google products).

You can get started on G Suite with a basic account for about five bucks per user per month. For full pricing and a list of features, check out the G Suite pricing page.

How To Get The Most Out Of Your Business Email

Here are four helpful tips to help you make the most out of your dental clinic’s business email.

1. Consistency Is Key

Use the same domain name for your business email address as your website to keep branding consistent and avoid confusing your potential patients.

For example, if your website domain name is example.com, your business email address should be something like name@example.com.

2. Add Your Surname To Your Email

Consider adding your surname to the local part of the email address (the bit before @). E.g. johnsmith@example.com or john.smith@example.com.

This will help clients, colleagues and suppliers remember your full name and avoid issues with people having the same first name.

This might not seem like a problem if there are only a few people working in the clinic, but if you have any plans to expand, it’s best to set yourself up well from the start.

3. Use Alias Email Addresses

If you’re a one-man-band or very small team perhaps try sharing an inbox with multiple alias email addresses. An alias is just another email address people can contact you through. For example, info@example.com, sales@example.com, and support@example.com would all send inbound emails to your shared inbox.

This is a great way of looking bigger than you actually are and keeping costs down. Services like G Suite let you create multiple email aliases for no additional cost. Sharing an inbox also helps you keep an eye on all communications and makes it easier to pick up emails if someone is absent.

4. Check Your Old Email Address

People will continue to send emails to your old email address for a time. To avoid missing important information and communications, consider regularly checking your old email address or having emails sent to your old email address forwarded to your new business email address.

Let’s Wrap This Up!

Hopefully, you now understand why having a business email address is important for your dental clinic’s credibility and, more importantly, how to set up a business email address either for free through your web host or for a low monthly fee through G Suite.

If you need help setting up a business email address, contact your IT department/contractors or drop us a message right away we’d be happy to help you set up the perfect email address for your dental practice.

CASE STUDY

Dickens Yard Dental

Meet Dr. Sahil Thakkar. Owner, founder, and principal dentist of Dickens Yard Dental, a dental practice based in West London. As a brand new business, the main goal was to increase the number of new patients to kick things off.