Free email accounts from National accounting bodies for members

Great idea. Very good for branding. Would make my emails look a lot better.

@KK An interesting idea. Those with long memories may recall that the IT Faculty back in the early 1990s, before business use of the internet really took off, got a special deal for members to join Cix. The faculty's bulletin boards on Cix have long since passed into history but there's still a handful of members who have @cix.co.uk email addresses which date back to that time. Later (late '90s I think) the ICAEW centrally offered members email addresses @icaewmessaging - anyone remember that? - but the system died a death. These days it is pretty easy to register domain names - provided someone else has not already grabbed what you want. Most of us have work email addresses that use the branding of our work organisation. For personal use I registered boothfamily[dot]org[dot]uk, so that is my personal email - otherwise you end up with a personal email address that's tied to particular supplier (eg tiscali, gmail etc) and have to change your email address if you change supplier. Would you be wanting to use the brand for work or personal purposes?

What I would be interested to know is how much demand there would be for ICAEW and/or IT Faculty-branded email addresses, and - if it were available - would members be willing to pay for it. My hunch is that the time for this kind of service may have passed. But prove me wrong: let's see how many others would like it. (I hasten to add that this is not necessarily an offer to put such a service in place. It's certainly not something we would be able to do at the drop of a hat, if at all.)

I can see where Paul Booth is coming from and I have that long memory of the CIX email addresses as well. However I wonder if there is a parallel to be drawn from the MBNA credit card service that the ICAEW provides for members - different but may be of value to consider?

Good idea but not sure how it would work for business email as most of us either have a company email address or a personal one that is known to clients.That said, would be interested as a way of letting clients know I am a member of the ICAEW

Kate Bowman

Bring 'em on, great idea

Having just ended my Presidential year of the South Western Society I would have found it useful to have had an ICAEW email address for some of the communications - both outside parties and with fellow Presidents around the country.

Maybe if you want a small project to start with, offering ICAEW addresses to district society office holders and committee members would be a good place to start.

For those of us who do not have our own domain name, it is probably a good idea. Personally, I have my own family domain name, three business domains as well as googlemail, three hotmail, and a Windows Live mailbox. I have enough mailboxes; any more and I would start getting really confused.

Chris Jones

I certainly like the idea of increasing awareness and making use of the ICAEW branding; however I personally would not use a new e-mail address specifically set up by the institute as there simply too many of these already. I would however like to suggest that the Institute "licence" or allow current members to use the logo within their own company e-mail headers etc. While it would add crecibility to the member, it would also give the company that employs the member further respectability. Good luck wth the project :).

I am not sure that this presents a huge amount of value for members, as most are already tied to legacy emails, whether corporate or personal. However, could this be an opportunity for student members and to further cement the ICAEW brand? Consideration would also need to be given to the use of the brand and potential confusion over the relationship that the ICAEW has, or may be seen to have, wrt to the email user, their business and addressees of their emails.

I think it might be useful for people who are perhaps looking for work and need a "sensible" looking email address. Personally though, I have too many email addresses as it is - personal, University alumni, work. Only yesterday I had a ex colleague and friend comment on the fact that he didn't know which email address to contact me on these days...

Agree with M Rahaman on potential confusion over the relationship between user and the ICAEW.

Think Olivers idea of a licence to use the ICAEW logo on email headers is a fantastic idea and would avoid the problem of introducing yet another email address which most of us seem to have in abundance already.

I could see this being useful for sole practitioners setting up their own business and who would happy to be associated with the ICAEW brand. Also for students (as previously mentioned) but I really don't see this working for people in larger practices & industry where we really need to use our business domain names.

For the reasons already noted above I suspect this would only be of interest to a small proportion of ICAEW members:

• new sole practitioners,
• those who have yet to adopt a 'serious' business email address and
• those older sole practitioner or semi-retired members who have yet to start emailing clients. If they ever feel the urge to do so then the opportunity to adopt an icaew branded email service may just tip the balance.

The rest of us already have known email addresses and I can't think of a benefit that would be gained of adding or moving to a new email address that focuses on our professional body rather than our family or business name.

This thread seems to have attracted a lot of feedback. Thank you all. 
I am a member of ICAEW and the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore.  The Singpaore Institute's url is www.icpas .org.sg. Members use the e-mail address xxx@icpas.com.sg whilst staff of ICPAS use the e-mail xxx@icpas.org.sg
I find the icpas.com.sg e-mail useful as a permanent e-mail I could use for a long time as I loose my business e-mail whenever I change jobs.  My yahoo e-mail gets suspended when I do not use it for some period of time.
The generic e-mails like gmail and yahoo do not lend credibility when I correspond with companies and Govt depts. I believe if ICAEW were to offer members an e-mail service, it would be something members would use to identify themselves as part of the world's premier Accountancy body and qualification.
To add to Clive's point, In Singpaore, if we are a committee member of the Singapore Insitute, we are entitled to use the Institute name card with our comiittee title on one side and our business name card on the other. This may help in your case.
I would support the idea of ICAEW offer us an e-mail account, but perhaps not xxx@icaew.com as it would be confusing to third parties.  Perhpas the e-mail could be xxx@CharteredAccountants.co.uk
TomTrainer, Kathryn, John, Clive and I makes 5 votes for the motion

Good points Kok Tang. I'll add to my list above:

• Younger members and newly qualifieds who want to use a professional email address when between jobs.

The list is growing....

I would use an INstitute email address if it was easily recognisable, e.g the suggestion above: xxx@CharteredAccountants.co.uk or similar. This is despite already having multiple addresses. Devices such as Blackberry and iphone now make it easy to manage different addressses.

It would be useful to have ICAEW branding which could be incorporated into emails easily.

I agree that there's a lot of cases when this would be useful.

Could the ICAEW maybe also help new sole practitioners with their websites?  Perhaps by registering and offering a domain called, e.g. www.joebloggs.charteredaccountants.co.uk and low price hosting?

That would also no doubt fuel the qualified/unqualified debate because unqualifieds couldn't have that domain...

M

@emily: unfortunately Hicks & Co beat you to the charteredaccountants.co.uk domain name. Even so, the general idea makes a lot of sense from a branding perspective. Members can always make their mind up how they wish  to use?

Interesting idea but personally I don't see it adding much value as a member in business. Does anyone place much credence on domain suffixes? A perfect case in point is Hicks & Co whom I was disappointed to read have collared the charteredaccountants.co.uk domain which might have been the only one that makes immediate sense. Perhaps they could be persuaded in the interests of honesty to relinquish it.

Branding has its downside: too much of it can diminish rather than enhance the value of something.

In theory, this is a reasonable idea and 4-5 years ago, this would have been a sure fire winner. Trouble is that services like Windows LIVE and Google offer so much more (and for free) I can't see any real benefit - besides, are there actually any people out there that don't have Hotmail or Googlemail and Yahoo accounts these days?

Couple that with the fact that you can get your own domain name for very little and a hosted site (which usually includes several email accounts) and the appeal becomes even less.

 

I agree with Mark Lee's comments - I think it might be quite a welcome service for certain categories of members to be able to use an ICAEW-branded email.

Or perhaps charteredaccountants.co.uk is such a great domain name that the ICAEW should offer to buy it from Hicks & Co?  After all, they thought of it and got there first!

M

A few thoughts to summarise and respond to one of the fullest debates ever on IT Counts.

• Although many say they have quite enough email addresses already and point out that it's cheap and easy to register new domains (both for organisational and personal use), there are several who feel it would be useful to certain categories of member, eg new sole practitioners.
• There is scope for confusion with icaew.com addresses, which are Institute staff. A domain such as icaewmember.co.uk (I have looked it up and see that the Institute already owns that one) would avoid that sort of confusion.
• A separate suggestion has been made that it should be possible to incorporate the Institute branding into email messages. If you are a member firm, that is already possible subject to the guidelines set out on this web page, which applies to both 'printed and digital materials'.
• Nobody who has commented in favour of the email address idea has actually said that they would be willing to pay anything for it. For some reason, everyone has ignored that bit of my earlier comment! How much money would you be prepared to put where your mouth is? Although the domain costs next to nothing, the cost of admin would have to be met from somewhere. 'End-user pays' is not of course the only possible model, but it would be interesting to know who would value it enough to pay something for it.

Instead of seeing it as a cost that requires service fees to users, should the Institute treat this as a (relatively small?) investment in further increasing a sense of comunity around its brand, an extension to the ION concept?

The ACCA already offer this service for free, as far as I can see (without signing up), with a domain of accamail.com. I am not sure what checks they do when someone registers as to whether they are a qualified ACCA accountant.

Google also offers companies an email service at $50 (per year?) a user so that IT departments don't have to worry about maintaining the service and the strains on bandwidth. It is also supposed to be cheaper than trying to run email as a company - Sky uses it for all their email accounts but I am guessing that they get a huge discount per user because of sheer numbers.

Google Mail also allows you to add email accounts into a central account for management. I have found it extremely useful with the number of email accounts I have. All my Hotmail, Yahoo and some of my own domain email goes into a central account. In theory I don't miss any emails now - a little off topic but hopefully a handy tip. I don't own shares in Google either in case any one is wondering.

As a few other users have noted above, the business model for email has changed (certainly for a membership based insititution such as ICAEW).  There should be no prospect of the end user paying.

That changes the question to - do you want something that you currently do not have, for free?  Intuitively, people would say "yes".  However, there needs to be a good reason.  Other than some of those given above (re sole traders), I cannot see any benefit.  Most people now have their own addresses, and don't need another one.

In summary, for me, I would not use this service.  However, I see no significant disadvantage in offering it, but would anticipate very little take up.

I think the idea of using the ICAEW brand is a good one and have already commented that I would like to see the ICAEW licence it's members to add the brand logo on whatever e-mail accout they use. However I personally would not use a specific ICAEW e-mail account as I already have a work and separate personal account; I don't need yet another one. It's the ICAEW brand that adds huge value - not an e-mail account.

I would appreciate having an ICAEW for job hunting, and I'm sure the recruitment industry would value an instant way of recognising genuine institute members who were applying for jobs, particularly those that stipulate CCAB membership as a prerequisite. I'm not sure whether I would want to pay for such a service; it would sit better as an additional service offered for the Institute's existing annual subscription

We are fast heading to a surfeit of electronic communication methods and structures, which I am convinced are now slowing us down, and making us waste time.  Maybe OK in a recession if you don't have enough to do but........

Take the simple case of coming back to work from holiday; it's not just the post, catching up on office news, client phone calls to return, but a whole load of emails to wade through, about 80% of which are deleted instantly.  Then there's the important email which in the middle of the rubbish gets deleted as well.......

I can't actually cope with much more!  Let's be practical, and not just idealistic.