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up vote 4 down vote favorite

This may seem an awfully trivial question, but its one that's been bugging me enough to ask it here.

I've developing (in the final stages before initial release) a web application service to sell to businesses (SaaS I believe they call it), and I have both a company and product domains set up with rudimentary pages up there currently.

However with email I've only set up addresses through the company domain, so we've got an email account each along with a more general contact and admin aliases set up on the company domain.

Now how important is it to have email addresses such as sales, support, etc on the product domain, as I could just create them on the company domain and be done with it.

Additionally if I set up these addresses on the product domain, how important is it to also have the replies to incoming emails be from the same product domain, rather than the company domain?

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6 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

It really depends on how you are marketing your product, and how do you intend it to evolve. If you want to build a brand around the product, it may make sense for the product to have its own identity - its own website, its own contacts, email addresses, etc. On the other hand, if the product is being sold as one of the products offered by your company, & the company is the brand, then the company domain email addresses are fine. If you do end up using the company domain email addresses, you should make sure that your customers are aware of the company-product relationship.

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We'll be trying to make the product the brand for the forseeable future. If so I believe you're saying that we should have all new email accounts for the product, separate from the company ones, right? – Daemin Jan 25 '10 at 8:07
@Daemin - Sounds like your product needs an email address. – JeffO Jan 25 '10 at 13:39
Correct. If the intent is to build the brand around the product, you start by creating the brand yourself - product has its own website, its own email addresses, its own brochure. We have a similar situation - see Trakeze.com (and see how we say Trakeze by Aciron)... Trakeze being the product name and Aciron being the company name. – Puneet Gangal Jan 25 '10 at 16:52
up vote 3 down vote

As it often is, context will tell you what to do.

If people are buying your product on the product domain then it should be the email@productdomain.com in your email address.

If they are buying it on your company site it should be email@companyname.com

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up vote 3 down vote

Sorry this is not a great answer but just wanted to point out my opinion on the subject. Feel free to down vote if you hate this sort of answers :)

I'm sure there are some good and bad implications but they are too small to bother.

If you are a small company I'd say just do something stick with it when it comes this sort of stuff. If you are big, the marketing department take care of these tiny details.

Because %99 of the time it simple "doesn't matter".

Customer doesn't care about it, it won't change a thing for you, it's not going to increase or decrease your sales.

Personally I use only 3 email addresses (in the company domain) and every single one of them get replied by one email (again from company domain). So just aliases. It's less overhead. Using a separate email will cause more overhead on managing accounts nothing else (at least nothing else that really matters).

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So if I get this right, at least for you, it doesn't matter if people email the product domain, and get a reply from the company domain? – Daemin Jan 25 '10 at 13:48
No all of those 3 emails are the same domain (which is company domain), what you said would be a bit confusing. What I'm doing is contact@company.com and sales@company.com will be replied by myname@company.com – the dictator Jan 25 '10 at 14:56
Okay, that's what I wanted to know. I know about aliasing and we already use that for the company email, just wanted to know if someone emailing the product domain would be confused (or would look bad/crappy) to then get an email back from the company domain. However you advocate just using the company email everywhere. – Daemin Jan 25 '10 at 15:47
Just because you use e-mail aliases doesn't mean all replies must come from the non-aliased/main e-mail. It depends on your mail server and client setup. I use Postfix mail server and Seamonkey mail client, which supports multiple identities. With my setup, all replies automatically use the original e-mail address that was specified, regardless of aliases. This eliminates confusion for customers, as they always get replies from the same e-mail address they wrote to. Plus, it reduces your administrative overhead; all e-mails are consolidated into one inbox. – Clint Jan 26 '10 at 23:03
up vote 2 down vote

What stops you from having email addresses both in company and products domain? You can easily forward all product specific email accounts to be forwarded to your company email and you'll have to check only your company' accounts.

That is what I would do when I release my product, because till then I'm already using company accounts and I need them in the foreseeable future.

Good question, btw.

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If you have both email addresses and just do simple forwarding, then the replies to incoming email will be from the company domain and not the product domain. So in that case is it really worth it? Or what I want to know - does that matter that much? – Daemin Jan 25 '10 at 13:38
If the product fails, but the company remains and launches other products, you've lost a lot of exposure with the email on the old product and nothing to connected the two. I may save a product email address (esp. for support), so it doesn't get filtered as spam. – JeffO Jan 25 '10 at 13:41
up vote 1 down vote

As @ThomPete mentioned where you sell the product from should give you an idea. If you are planning on making your company the front face of your marketing and sales efforts then @company.com might make senese.

If you want to get your company name out like FogCreek or have a vision like that that then the company name may be better (FogCreek has products/apps like FogBugz, CoPilot etc.).

Depending on where you are on your venture you may choose a low tech or high tech approach. One of the high tech approaches is using a service/app like HelpSpot.com.

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up vote 0 down vote

It's hard to give a useful answer without more details regarding product description, company name and long term goals.

Generally speaking, I would recommend to limit your company name as a small mention on the page footers and brand everything to the product name (assuming its a good catchy, easy to remember name). You might consider incorporating the product name as well, or register it as an alias for the company.

You want clients to remember how to get in touch with you even when they aren't on the site, so I think keeping it as simple as possible is the way to go.

Best of Luck, Doug

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