How to set up a free domain email with Gmail
If you want to do any kind of email marketing you will need to have a domain email. This means an email address like info@yourdomain.com or similar. Even if you don’t want to set up email marketing and an autoresponder then it looks more professional to print a branded email address in your books.
So how do you set up a free domain email with Gmail?
If you search google for an answer it is surprisingly hard to find out because you get lots of paid options coming up in the search results. I am sure they are very good- but I have never used any of them, because I have always set up a free domain email with Gmail instead. Even the Bluehost dashboard makes it hard to see anything other than paid for email options. The free domain email is very well hidden.
The only thing you need to pay for is a domain name, and you probably should buy that anyway, even if you don’t plan on starting a website, to stop anyone else grabbing it first.
My hack to set up a free domain email address with Gmail (even if you don’t have a website)
To set up your free domain email the only thing you need is:
- Your domain name
(I buy mine from Bluehost and I recommend you do too so you can follow these step by step instructions) - A free gmail address
This will be hidden, so it doesn’t matter what the gmail address is- however I recommend setting up a new gmail account and choosing a name that closely matches. You do not need a paid Google email – called G-Suite or something. You just need the basic, free gmail account.
Next- you need to login to Bluehost.
- In the menu on the left hand side click on ADVANCED…… don’t panic- it isn’t that hard. I think they just like to make it look difficult so people go for the paid version instead. You can find the paid email options under the ’email and office tab’ if you want to take a look, but otherwise just click on the advanced item in the menu.
This will open up the page shown below. - You need to click on the item called ‘FORWARDERS’.
A word of warning- don’t start messing with other settings here – all of the other things that have ’email’ or ‘autoresponders’ as headings are completely separate to what we are doing here…… don’t mess with them!
So click on FORWARDERS and you will see the screen below where we will add our new forwarder.
- In the ‘Address to forward’ box type in what you want your email address to be. So for example I might want to choose Catherine@mydomainname.com or if you don’t want your name, you can choose a word like hello or howdy as I have done above.
- In the Domain box select the correct domain from the drop down menu (if you have purchased more than one domain)
- In the destination field select ‘Forward to email address’ and type in the gmail address you have created
- To finish- click the blue box ‘Add Forwarder‘ and you are done. You will see a message like this below and when someone emails your branded email address you will receive the email in your gmail inbox.
- Finally, send your self an email at your new branded email address to check that the forwarder is set correctly and you receive it in your gmail inbox.
To check your email log in to your gmail account and the email should be there
You can add multiple email forwarders to a domain this way- so you could set up a different email address for each book and have them all forward to the same gmail address , or forward to different gmail addresses. Pretty cool.
How you have a free professional email set up you are ready to set up a freebie to gather email addresses and get started with email marketing.
READ THIS POST FOR A STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO GETTING STARTED WITH EMAIL MARKETING FOR FREE
