If you already have a domain name, head to your domain name provider and look for email hosting. Most offer a few plans, from 1 email account to lots.
Why would i need more than one email account?
Well you may want to have one account for general enquiries, one for marketing enquiries, one for sales enquiries and so on. Basically, you can pretend you have loads of staff, but really it's just little old you answering all of them. If in doubt, just go for one.
You can expect pay approx $12 per year for 1 email address, or $24 per year for 12 email addresses. (www.crazydomains.com)
OK so then what?
Right so now you have to set up the email addresses, your domain name provider will have detailed instructions of how to do this. If they don't, ring their helpline. If they don't have a phone number, then they suck and you should transfer your domain, any hosting you have and emails over to one of the big boys like Crazy Domains. They have 24/7 phone support and are brilliant at talking you through things.
OK so once you have set up your email account/s, you then need to set a "forwarder" to your gmail account. This should be somewhere in the same place you set up your email accounts. Whilst you're there, see if they allow you to set up a "catch all" forwarder. This means, if someone types in ANY email address that has your domain name at the end, you'll still get the email. Handy if they spell your name wrong.
OK next we have to go into gmail and into the cog icon - Settings. Along the top tabs, find and click on "Accounts". Scroll down until you see "Check email from other accounts (using POP3):" Here click on "Add a Pop 3 mail account you own". Follow the steps that it asks you to do. You will have received an email when you purchased your email hosting, this should have the passwords and settigns you're looking for. If not, ring your domain provider.
You will receive an email to verify the account. As you've set up your forwarder already, it should come straight into your gmail. Click the link and verify.
OK so now you have to be able the SEND AS that account you've just linked into your gmail account. Go back to the Cog icon - Settings - Accounts and scroll down to "Send Mail As" and click on "Add another email address you own". complete the steps.
Here you can also choose to set this new email address as the default so that any time you reply, no matter which account they emailed, you'l reply from the business account. Just click on Make default.
You're almost done. Now go into your main gmail screen and hit Compose, can you see the new email address as the from? Awesome. Next to that, you'll see a small arrow that you can click just incase you need to send it from another account.
What if i don't have a domain name?
No probs, just go and buy one. They are only about $12 per year. I use crazy domains.
Email Signatures
It's my opinion that a text signature is best these days, as most people as a general rule, don't download images automatically in emails. To set up a basic text signature for any of your linked accounts, go to your cog icon - settings. On the General tab, scroll down till you see Signatures. Select the email account you want to set up a text signature for then type it in, format in any fonts you like, bold etc. Then scroll down and click save.
Here is what my signature looks like:
Warm regards
Nicole Herrick
GRAPHIC DESIGN | PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY | IMAGING SERVICES
Another neat trick is to add in all your social links like this:
BLOG | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | PINTEREST
That little straight up and down character is created by holding down shift and pressing backslash (not forwardslash). Well on a pc it does, no idea on mac sorry.
If you do want to put your logo in, i recommend only putting your logo as an image and not the whole signature, do the rest in text, so then at least they'll see that even if they haven't chosen to view images in the email.
To add an image to a signature, you can't simply upload it. The image needs to be on a website somewhere secure and you need to copy the URL of that image. It also need to be the right size already. You can try the logo on your website if it allows you to right click and "copy the image URL" but often this is too large for your email signature.
The easy thing to do is set up a free Flickr account, which is just a place where you can store all your pics. Upload the pic, right click it and grab the url. Head back to your signature set up and click on the little Insert image icon. It looks like two little mountains.
OK you're done! Phew that was a long one with no lovely pics so here's one to end my post.
