One of the best kept secrets in Gmail is the email alias. Also known as an alternate email address.
When you first set up your email you may not have been thinking about the long-term use of it. You may have set up your email using your own name, only to realize now you don’t want people to email you “personally”. You’d rather have them email a more generic inbox, like ‘hello’ or ‘studio’. Or maybe you want your executive assistant or VA to have an email address, but you’d prefer that any emails they send/receive go to your inbox because they’re also managing it.
You might think the solution is to create a new, more generic inbox, but that means paying for another account and managing another inbox.
The solution? Setting up an email alias in Gmail.
An email alias will allow you to set up multiple alternate email addresses all housed under your original email address. For free.
If you’ve never heard of or gotten overwhelmed with the idea of setting up aliases, here’s some ways I have used aliases.
Now that you know how to set up aliases in Gmail, as well as some examples, I’ll just say this once…
Don’t go too crazy on the aliases. Keep to a limited number and you’ll keep your sanity.
But also, when setting up your aliases, make sure to set up filters and labels to match. This will actually allow you to leverage what you’ve started to set up.
For example, if you set up a newsletter alias, set up a Newsletters label and create a filter that will take any email sent to that alias and add that label to it. Automatically.
If you haven’t yet set up your labels (or they’re in need of an overhaul), this blog post talks about setting up labels and sections in your inbox. In that post I share the exact inbox framework I use for myself and clients. It includes the exact labels I use, as well as how to set up inbox sections. Which is the key to having a stress-free inbox.
The problem though, can be that your inbox gets flooded constantly with emails, chunks of which don’t actually need to go directly to your inbox, or can get organized up front. Besides having a great filter and label system, using Gmail Aliases is the second best thing you can have. And it’s free to do.
Aliases can be a sanity (and budget) saver, but just make sure that you’re using them wisely and are setting up the additional support systems (filters & labels) to go along with them.
leave one here
comments