Consolidate Email Addresses: How and Why
How many places do you have to check email? Do you remember to check them all? Or have you found yourself checking a little-used email and found hundreds of messages?
I have a lot of email addresses. I’ve been using email for many, many years, and have switched services from my internet provider to Hotmail to Yahoo to GMail. And then I have email addresses for the blogs (5 total blogs), my company and work. If I had to check all of these individually I would be sunk!
Why You Should Consolidate
If you have multiple email addresses, you should consider consolidating as much as possible. The reasons are purely practical:
- Fewer places to check
- Fewer places to process
It isn’t enough just to check email – you have to deal with it. And the fewer places you have to check, the fewer you have to process.
A Word About Unused Email Addresses
If you find that you have email addresses that you never use, please consider closing them down. That gives you even fewer you have to worry about checking/consolidating.
Ways to Consolidate
There are several ways to consolidate both the checking and processing of multiple accounts. All of these methods can be combined to give you the most flexibility in checking and processing email.
Device Email
With a smart phone, it is possible to have all of your email pull into your phone. Some apps even make it possible to quickly process through all the email. I pull all of my Gmail and my Yahoo mail in this way; I use an app called Spark (iOS) but there is a program called Boxer (Android) that seems to have the same functionality.
Not only does Spark allow me to pull in email from multiple sources, I can swipe left/right to quickly put any email into my processing folders or delete it. (Boxer appears to have the same functionality)
Desktop Client
A desktop client is a great way to pull all your email together. There are so many clients out there, some free, some paid, all of them with their own specific set of features. All web email services allow you to use desktop client (note: some of them require pay for this feature).
The only disadvantage is that when you are using a desktop client, your email stays on your computer; you cannot access it directly from your phone or another computer.
Autoforwards
For those email addresses where you want to maintain a copy of the email in situ, but still be able to process the email, an autoforward can work. Most online email services allow you to set up an address to send all email to.
This can be good if you have a blanket address that you want to end up in the same place as other email. For instance, comment@SimpleProductivityBlog.com ends up in the same place as lj@SimpleProductivityBlog.com via autoforward.
POP/web
Some online email clients like Gmail allow you to retrieve other email accounts via POP other email accounts. This puts the email in one place, where you can check via app, program or web.
By pulling all information into one online site, you have access to all of your email everywhere and can deal with it all at once.
Conclusion
Consolidating email accounts allows you to maintain separate email addresses while minimizing the amount of accounts you have to check and process.
Your assignment: figure out how you can consolidate your addresses.
Image by Sean MacEntee. Licensed under Creative Commons. Text added.
