Hello and welcome to our series of blog posts on how to start a piano studio! In the previous posts, we were all about the piano studio and the domain names. And today we are talking about the importance of a branded email address and the ways you can achieve it. Before we explain why a professional or branded email address is important for your piano studio, let’s see why do we need email at all.
Why Email?
You might be surprised to hear, but that email is one of the most effective communication tools. There are many benefits of using email to communicate with your clients. It is asynchronous and non-blocking as you don’t have to reply right away in the middle of your class like you would reply to the customer knocking on your door or calling your phone, you can leave the email in your Inbox until you find a good time to read it. And finally, because it is invisible to your recipient until you hit the Send button, you can take your time and think it through before you reply, write your answer a little bit at a time if required. Not to mention you can reply to several people at once as well as attach important forms and documents.
All in all, email is very effective in reaching out to your customers, announcing the news, and sharing and collecting information at the same time. Your customers will keep and use your piano studio email address more often than you think. That’s why you want a branded email address as it will make it look professional and trustworthy. What is a branded email and how is it different from the free email address?
Branded email address
It has never been simpler to open a free email box with Google, Microsoft or Yahoo. You can open as many of those [email protected] as you wish to segregate the emails and protect your identity from spam and fraud attacks. However, in one of the Verisign surveys, 65 percent of consumers believe a company-branded email is more credible than a business using a free email account. Would free email be a wise choice for the reputation of your newly created piano studio? Would you look credible in the eyes of your customers with a free email address? We recommend you consider a branded email address instead. And here is how you can get one.
Email in the cloud
There are of course ways to configure your own email server, software, permissions, and monitoring. However, there are so many cloud solutions available on the market today for email that there is no point in wasting your time and money on setting it up by yourself. To name a few G Suite from Google, Microsoft Office 365 from GoDaddy, Zoho Workplace from Zoho, etc.
What you need is the cheapest plan which allows a custom domain. It is up to you what vendor you choose and you, of course, have your own considerations. Just make sure the plan you go with allows the use of your own domain name. Last, but not least a little bit about the email address itself.
Address
The email address has two parts. The part before and after the @ symbol. The part after the @ symbol is your piano studio domain name and if you could register it then by definition it is unique e.g. @sepiapiano.studio. You can now reap the benefit of the good-looking and simple domain name! What else do we have in the email address?
The local part of the email address or the text before the @ symbol is your opportunity to either hide your own identity or expose it and it is totally up to you. If you feel strongly about your piano studio brand as a business you should consider disconnecting it from your personal one. An anonymous local part for the email address such as [email protected] may work better in these cases. It will also be easy to transfer to another owner if you decide to sell your piano studio in the future. A more personal local part of the email address will connect your customers with you on a more personal level. Preference is, of course, yours, but remember that each additional email address will cost you added monthly fees with the cloud provider. Starting with a single more generic email address might be a more scalable choice. Anything else?
Display name and Signature
The first impression matters a lot when it comes to trust. And you want your customers’ trust in your piano studio. The display name is what your clients see in the email first when they receive it and you want that to match your piano studio name. Make sure you test your display name by sending an email to your friend before sending your first email to the clients. If the display name is the first thing your customers see, then the signature is what your customer will see very last. You want to say thank you for their business and provide detailed contact information and perhaps some branding elements like the logo, your slogan or a motto.
Congratulations, you have an email address now, and your piano studio can send and receive emails. You have the name, domain and email address next thing is to create a website for your piano studio. We will be talking about it in the next post. Don’t forget to subscribe to our monthly giveaway and stay tuned.
Start piano studio and enjoy teaching the piano!
