Use Email Addresses Wisely to Streamline Your Email
You've Got Mail! So much mail that you're drowning...
We all want to reduce the amount of email in our inboxes, organize our email more efficiently and make sure that we see all the emails that are important to us. Here are some tips to do just that and more!
Be Selective About Who Gets Your Email Address
Believe it or not, following this simple step can reduce the number of emails you get daily by as much as 75%. Afterall the more people that have your email address, the more email you'll get. So, first, avoid signing up for every free offer, newsletter or ebook offer you see online. These free offers are the ticket to a constant barrage of sales pitches, coupons and more free offers. Instead, treat your email address as you would your home phone number in a crowd of strangers. Before you sign up for something, post comments on a forum or go to download that new piece of software, ask yourself if you would give this person or company your home phone number? If the answer is no, you shouldn't surrender your email address either!
If you must sign up for something online that doesn't pass the personal phone number test, try setting up a free online email address instead of surrendering your main email address. If the email in this free account begins to get overwhelming, you can always shut down the account and open another, without having to change the email address on your business cards, or inform everyone that your email address has changed. Free email accounts are available from Yahoo.com, Hotmail.com and Gmail.com.
You can also use email aliases for this purpose. Read on to find out more...
Setup Email Aliases for Better Email Control
If you own your own domain name (www.yourcompany.com), you can create a virtually unlimited number of email addresses, depending on your web host. For example, most companies have email addresses for different departments like sales@yourcompany.com, support@yourcompany.com and the like. Email addresses like these can be real email accounts that are checked in an email program like Outlook or they can be setup as aliases. An email alias is simply an email address whose only purpose is to forward email to another email address. So for example, if you want everyone on your staff to receive email that comes into staff@yourcompany.com, simply setup an alias to forward all the email that comes into that address to all the members of your staff. Simple.
Email aliases can also offer you the opportunity to wear many hats, so to speak. By creating separate aliases for sales, marketing, support, development and the like, and then filtering email that comes from those addresses to different folders, you can instantly take a look at sales leads that have come in overnight without having to see all the support requests, development emails etc. This keeps your inbox clean and you more organized.
Email aliases can also allow you to shield your main email address from sales pitches, junk email and spam. You probably have a main email address like yourname@yourcompany.com. Did you know that you can create aliases that will allow you to sign up for free newsletters, download software and more without having to surrender your main email address? Simply setup an email alias like info@yourcompany.com, marketing@yourcompany.com etc. and forward the email that comes into that address to your main email account. This way, if you ever become overwhelmed with email from an alias, you can delete the alias and still keep your main email address without having to change your business cards or inform your staff and business associates.
Empowered by these tips and techniques, you are now ready to re-enter the world of email. We hope we've made that world a little lighter and a lot easier to navigate and organize.
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