How many email addresses do you have? A personal account and a work account? Maybe a spam account to give to cashiers when they insist on getting your email?
Email users around the world have 4.4 billion email accounts. And it’s safe to say that most users probably have multiple email addresses. Considering the amount of time people spend reading and answering email, having more than one email account can make that process even more complex and time consuming.
Luckily, there are ways to effectively manage multiple email accounts. This guide should give you all the insights and tricks you need to do just that.
4 Ways to Manage Multiple Email Accounts
If you have more than one email account, it’s likely you’ll need to check all of them throughout the day. How do you best manage your multiple accounts? Here are a few options.
1. Open each account in a web browser
First, you could open each email account in its own tab in a web browser. For this method to work, your email client must support webmail. The benefit here is that it keeps the email addresses separate, which could be ideal for privacy or if you prefer to keep work and personal separate.
The downside to this is that it can be confusing and it slows down your browsing experience by having numerous tabs open. Plus, each interface is different and you’ll have to click between each tab when checking email.
2. Set up email forwarding to a master account
An alternative to the confusion of multiple browser tabs is to use one master email address, to which incoming email is forwarded from your multiple email accounts. You can do this by turning on email forwarding in each individual account and managing all your emails from a master account.
This method could also work in the reverse, where you receive all incoming email to one master account, then forward emails to the proper account. However, this still means you have several email address to manage and will cost you time sorting incoming emails.
While these approaches do improve upon the previous option, they still have disadvantages. In the first suggestion, when you reply to an email from the master account, that’s the email address the recipient will see (and thus reply to). This could be confusing if you’re mixing work and personal emails. The second option actually adds an additional email account to the mix, making your situation even more complex.
3. Use a desktop email client
Most email clients are made to help people get through their multiple email accounts in the easiest way possible. There are loads of email clients out there for all pretty much every single OS. Make sure when choosing the best email client for your needs, that it supports multiple account management. And this brings us to the next point.
4. Use a Universal/ Unified Inbox
The best option for effective email account management is to use a universal inbox. It may not be called Universal inbox for all email clients. In Mailbird, its called “Unified Inbox” i.e. It allows you to consolidate multiple email accounts into one well-managed inbox. Regardless of the email provider, you can sync multiple email addresses with Mailbird and access emails from all accounts in one inbox. (Your Unified Inbox is denoted by the hexagon icon at the top of the left menu. Read more about this cool feature here.)
Consolidating your email accounts into one inbox lets you access them anywhere, anytime. You’ll save time and energy by only needing to open one program or account, and by keeping everything organized in one place.
Quick Tips to Effective Email Account Management
Now that you’ve set up your multiple email accounts to your liking, there are steps you can take to ensure you stay on top of your newly organized inbox(es).
1. Program an automatic email signature
If you decide to use a Unified Inbox, you’ll be sending emails for multiple purposes from one platform. Which means you might be handling work email and personal email from one place.
The first step you should take is to set up email signatures for your different accounts. Doing so will save you valuable time when responding to emails since you can simply choose a pre-programmed email signature that automatically populates into the bottom of your message. Also, this will ensure the recipient has your contact information moving forward.
2. Sort and filter emails into folders
Another great email management tip is to treat your inbox like your desktop. Each email is a like a file that’s sorted into specific folders. You can do this manually when you receive an email or you can set up a filter. Filters automatically sort emails from certain email address or that contain certain information into folders, rather than having them build up in your inbox.
If you have multiple accounts, a filing system helps keep work and personal separate, or work from one project separate from another, or even work from one job separate from a second job. Especially if you need to archive emails to refer back to at a later date.
3. Set time to check email
With email just a finger tap away, it’s easy to get sucked into your inbox. This is especially true if you have multiple email accounts. The more accounts you have, the more email you receive!
It’s recommended for better focus and time management that you set aside time to check email (and don’t check email outside of your allotted time period). Respond to the quick emails right away—don’t let them sit in your inbox. If they require a more lengthy response, flag them for later.
Further, keeping multiple email accounts organized, especially in a Unified Inbox, will help you get the most of out this time, so you can get back to the important stuff—like planning your next vacation!
Conclusion
Most people probably don’t realize how much time they’re wasting managing multiple email accounts. You might check different accounts at different times, or maybe you’ve just accepted the way things are. In reality, once you set your Unified Inbox or master account, you’ll never want to go back. We hope you find these tips helpful in getting you closer to a well-managed inbox.
Have you found anything particularly helpful to manage multiple email accounts? We’d love to hear your tips! Share them in the comments below.
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