It's Time to Stop Using a Free Webmail Address for your Email Marketing

You can't (shouldn't) use free webmail addresses for your email marketing.

As more and more of us are doing online marketing (such as using services like MailChimp or Constant Contact), it's important to consider getting an email that's @yourdomain.com using Google Apps or Office 365.

Big providers think bulk emails from free webmail accounts are likely spam

The reason is that the big providers (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc) have become very strict about what emails they allow to reach their customers. So if for example, you send a marketing email out from drwank@gmail.com, there is a significant chance that it will be flagged as Spam because this email account can't be validated as actually coming from Dr. Wank.

An email attached to your own domain helps your emails to reach their target

Contrast that with sending the emails from an email attached to the domain such as:  info@drwank.com.  If you use an email such as this one (with the @drwank.com domain) there is a much higher chance that the email will go through as intended. The reason for this behavior is that if you are sending from specific domain (such as drwank.com) it means that you have paid for this domain -- and that you have (or your tech people will) setup certain "proof of ownership" features (DKIM, SPF, etc).

G-Suite or Office 365 are inexpensive solutions and are easy to setup

Thus, if you are doing any type of email marketing, it's a good idea to start to consider using G-Suite (formerly Google Apps) or Office 365 for your email address.