Overview
What does an email address say about a person? It can express our identity, professionalism, or wit. And once we use it long enough it's difficult to change. That may pose a problem for those who chose their email address several years ago, when personal email addresses weren't so professional and domains like Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo were common.
Now, with Google's Gmail claiming a predominant share of the U.S. email market and social norms around email crystalizing, it makes us wonder whether non-Gmail email addresses look less professional.
The Experiment
We conducted an experiment with 800 people to test the how professional a hypothetical email sender seemed when using a Gmail vs. Yahoo email address domain, and whether those perceptions differ between younger and older respondents.
Participants were told "Imagine you get an email from [[email protected] / [email protected]], a recent acquaintance asking if there are any job openings at the company you work for." Participants were randomly assigned to see either the Gmail or Yahoo email address. Participants were then asked, "How professional do you feel this person is?" (1 = Not at all, 7 = Extremely).
Results
The results revealed a statistically significant, albeit small 5.9% professionalism premium for the Gmail email address (avg. = 4.53) relative to the Yahoo email address (avg. = 4.28), (p = 0.014). The figure below illustrates this result graphically. The results did not change significantly when considering participants' gender or age.
Conclusion
It appears that Gmail users enjoy a slight boost in professionalism, at least relative to Yahoo email users. Nevertheless, the effect is small. It's probably not worth changing an email address you've had for years, if not decades. But if you're planning to send an important email from either of these domains, it probably wouldn't hurt to have a Gmail address in your back pocket.
For more research on how your email address affects perceptions of your professionalism, check out our other studies on email address names and email signatures. Or, check out our report, 10 Tips for Better Emails.
Methods Note
Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analyses were used to test for significant differences in how professional our email sender seemed when using a Gmail vs. Yahoo email address. OLS regression analyses with interaction terms were used to test whether the results differed by readers' age or gender. Our statistical significance threshold was a p-value below 0.05.
Additional details are available on our methodology page. Data and survey materials are available upon request.