Here’s a quick question: do you have multiple email accounts? Do you need to check them all regularly? Do they use different platforms? The more accounts and platforms you have, the easier it is to miss potentially important mail. This week we have tips on email management and how to solve this problem.
How Many Email Addresses are Necessary
At work, you may need to deal with several email addresses: perhaps one for internal communications, one for communicating with clients and another one for staying in touch with vendors and suppliers. That could add up to a lot of emails, and perhaps lots of time spent logging in and out of different accounts when you’ve got more important things to think about. The good news is that your preferred platform will have options for email management; but, first of all, let’s deal with some terms.
Email Terminology
An email account refers to an individual email address. Your organization may have an email address that ends with ‘@mybusiness.com’. Your own addresses are ‘User 1@mybusiness com’ and ‘User2@mybusiness.com’. These are two different accounts, even though the domain is the same.
The program you use to read your emails is known as the email client. Examples are Gmail and Microsoft Outlook. Depending on how they’re set up, they can be used interchangeably, so all your emails appear in both programs. That’s helpful, but it doesn’t solve the problem if you’re having trouble managing multiple email accounts. That’s where the extra features of your preferred email client come in.
Using Multiple Inboxes
The developers who design email understand that people might need to use more than one address (and therefore account) and more than one platform. The solution was to design email clients so that multiple inboxes are supported, to make email management simpler. The result is that you can configure things so that you can start managing multiple email accounts from a single email client. If necessary, they can be combined, or they can be kept in different folders.
Using Multiple Personas in a Central Inbox
There’s another method available to you if you’re happy to use a single inbox for all your correspondence, but still want to be able to reply using different addresses. To get started, you’ll need to set up an email account with an address that you don’t give out and, technically, don’t use for communicating with people. This will be your central clearing house for mail. Next, you need to set up all your other accounts to forward incoming mail to that address (it’s not hard, but it may be a plan to get your in-house tech help to assist). With this done you’ll be halfway to managing multiple email accounts. To complete, you need to set it up so you can reply to messages using the address that they were sent to. Your email client will allow you to change the address in the ‘From’ box, so that you’re using the same address to reply.
Creating Inboxes and Personas
The procedures to setup your inboxes and personas differ between email clients and also between different versions of the same email program. For Outlook, you will need to consult the online information that relates to the version you are using – google ‘connected accounts’.
In Gmail, click on the gear symbol to enter the ‘Settings’ menu, and select the tab labelled ‘Accounts and import’. That should bring up options to ‘Check mail from other accounts’ and, when you click through, go to ‘Add a mail account’. To add new personas, navigate to the ‘Accounts and import’ tab, and then to ‘Send mail as’. You then have the option to ‘Add another email address’. You can also select which email address will be your default setting.
If you have difficulties with managing multiple email accounts, or other aspects of email management, Quikteks will be able to help. You can contact us at (973) 882-4644.