As I was walking downtown today, I was handed an advertising piece for The Fairmont Royal York hotel… a beautiful grand hotel at the foot of Toronto. They’re celebrating their centennial year!

In honour of this occasion, they’re offering a summer rate for Ontario residents which I think is such a great idea. That’s the beauty of advertising, it makes people consider spending their money with you, especially when you make them an offer they can’t refuse.

On the opposite side of this advertisement, they had a special promotion for their famous Afternoon Tea Service at the Epic Restaurant. Another great thing to check out if you’re so inclined. But I noticed at the bottom that they wanted people to send email to some long-ass email address (ryh.restaurantreservations@fairmont.com) and it got me thinking… why should this email address be so long, and is that really customer friendly?

And why is their email address to make reservations at the restaurant, not the same domain as the web site for the restaurant? Do their corporate branding people know about this?  I need to speak to the person in charge here.

So, I checked out their restaurant web site and was able to find a small reference to this promotional event (why promote something and then hide it on your web site?) and when I clicked on a link to contact them, it showed the email address of info@epicrestaurant.ca. So we know they get email within the same domain which is a good sign.

Not sure why they chose to use an email address that is at a different domain, let alone why they made it such as long-ass email address. But I think less people will send an email to a long-ass email address than would to a short and sweet email address… I know I wouldn’t.  We’ve already seen a similar issue with those long-distance-dial-some-special-funky-code-first-before-you-dial plans and look what happened to them.  Everybody want to dial direct… the less digits, the better.  And easier to remember.

For those businesses contemplating what your email address should be, or even your domain for that matter… keep your customers in mind and remember that shorter is easier, and being easy to do business with, results in more business.