How Many More Email Addresses Do You Need?
In How many email addresses do you need? I advocated that you need at least three email addresses. To review, I strongly recommend that you have:
- A private address for people you trust and prioritize highly.
- A public address for everyone else from whom you want to get email.
- A throw-away address for one time, or occasional use that you ignore the rest of the time.
That's a start. It's a good start, and will go a long way to taming the beast.
But it's just a start. Especially if you get a lot of mail, you can do better.
My Accounts
As I often do here, I'll use myself as an example.
I have four email accounts: (Visit On Domains, Accounts and Addresses for a refresher on the important difference between an account and an address.)
- A personal account.
- A business account for my business.
- A business account for my wife's business.
- A bulk mail account for bulk mail.
I should note that all the accounts are supplied by the same provider. In this case, that would be me, since I run my own mail server, but there are many services out there that will provide this same level of functionality.
The first three should be fairly self explanatory. For many important reasons, you want to project the correct image when running your business, and part of that these days is using the proper email domain when conducting that business. Hence the first three are all on their own domains ... my personal domain - notenboom.org, my company's domain - pugetsoundsoftware.com, and my wife's business domain - dollsandfriends.com. (I'll discuss how unprofessional it is to use a "Hotmail" or other free account for business in another essay.)
It's that last one, the bulk mail account, that's an important example of how an additional email account can streamline your life.
Bulk Mail
I use my "bulk mail" account for exactly what it sounds: it's the account that I use when subscribing to email newsletters and discussion lists. There's no person-to-person communication using that address, only bulk mail.
This let's me do three things:
I control my email downloads - exactly how often to check for and download email is a topic for another discussion, but when I do check mail throughout the day, I don't automatically download bulk mail.
I've configured my email program to only check for and download mail from the bulk mail account when I explicitly request it. I may request it when I'm bored, when I need a break, or I may be too busy and not download my bulk mail until the end of the day. The bottom line is that my bulk mail does not distract me from my "real" mail that is part of my business and which I do check more frequently throughout the day.
A nice side effect is that I can ignore or significantly delay bulk email when I'm traveling. When I'm on the road downloads may be slower, and I often have other things on my mind.
I file bulk mail separately - one of the simplest email processing rules is "move mail received on this account to that folder when it arrives." That's exactly what I do. All mail coming in on my bulk mail account bypasses my inbox completely, and goes into a separate folder, so that even if I do download it, it's still not distracting me from my other, more important, email.
I archive all bulk mail - this is another safety net. Recall that I use my bulk mail account for email discussion lists and newsletters. Have you ever wanted to go back to some old post on a mailing list, only to find that there's no archive? Or you recall that there was some really interesting tidbit of information in that tech newsletter you subscribe to, but now it's gone?
I make my own archive. Another really simple email processing rule is "move a copy of mail received on this account to that other folder when it arrives." Hence every piece of bulk mail that I get also goes into an archive folder that I can then search and retrieve from as needs be. Remember disk space is cheap.
Take Action
The idea here is not that you run out and set yourself up a bulk email account - though of course you can if that sounds like an approach that would serve you well.
What's more important here is the concept: separate accounts for separate reasons. With the exception of controlling when things get downloaded, everything here can be done with a single account using "rules", so focus on the downloads as the differentiator.
Look at your own email and try to determine what class of email, what senders could you relegate into a less-frequently checked bucket, a less frequently downloaded account?
Once you've identified them, create an account, or more than one account if it suits you, and change those senders to use those email addresses. In my case, I simply changed my subscription addresses for all the different newsletters and discussion groups I was on to my bulk email address. You would do something similar.
Add the corresponding rules to move your bulk mail to other folders, and you'll notice your inbox starting to feel lighter right away.
