Because so much of our work and personal lives are online these days, it can be a challenge for some users to really differentiate between a work profile and a personal one, especially when many use the same email address. For gmail users, there is a solution that could help separate work from personal life and important messages from those that are not. that option is to use an alias.
about the gmail alias
When you first sign up for a gmail or google account, you are asked to choose an email address or username. your username becomes the first part of your email address and is what you’ll probably give most people. however, there are times when you may not want to give out your email address but still need to, for example, signing up for a newsletter.
What many email providers have done is implement an aliases feature that allows you to set up a separate email address that can manage your main account. when an email is sent to your alias address, it appears in your main account inbox. Google doesn’t offer this feature in the traditional sense, rather the company has opted for a slightly different version of aliases.
with google, you can add a suffix to the main part of your email address to essentially create an alias. the way this works is by adding ‘+alias’ to the main part of your email address. all emails sent to this address will appear in your inbox, but for the sender they will be sent to a different address.
set up an alias in gmail
with gmail you don’t have to create a completely different account, you can create an alias email address instead. Let’s say you’re starting to subscribe to an increasing number of email newsletters, what you can do is add a suffix like +newsletter to your email address, so it will look like: [email protected]
then you can use this email for when you sign up for newsletters, and they will be sent to that address. The key here is that you can create as many +alias addresses as you like, and emails sent to that address will appear in your inbox.
why use an alias?
At first I thought this might seem a bit insignificant, after all, who really wants to create an alias like this? well the main reason this is such a useful feature is because of gmail filters and labels. You can use these two features to automatically sort and trigger emails sent to a specific email alias. when you combine the +alias feature with these, you have a pretty powerful way of managing your inbox.
here are some examples of how people use this feature:
1. for newsletters and other non-essential emails
We all get these emails, and while they’re not overly important, they can contain useful information we want. the problem is that these emails can be annoying and always seem to multiply.
One solution is to use an +alias, such as +news or +newsletters, when signing up for emails like this. then go into gmail and create a filter that will automatically tag all emails sent to the address with something like updates, or even archive them. To make it more effective, try setting the filter so that these emails automatically bypass the inbox, which means you won’t be notified when you have a new email.
2. for vips
If you have a number of clients you work closely with, or want to make sure you don’t miss out on any of them, why not set up an alias like [email protected] which you can then give them?
From there, set up a filter in gmail that automatically marks emails sent to this address as important and top priority. By setting it to also automatically add a glowing label, you’ll increase your chances of seeing the email faster and know it’s important right away.
3. for impromptu reminders
We’ve all been in a situation where we want to send ourselves a reminder to do something later. one thing we can do is send an email with an alias like [email protected] with the reminder.
In gmail, set up a filter to automatically label each email sent to the above email address with a label as a reminder. these emails can also go directly to your archives and bypass your inbox, but when you click the reminder tag, they will still appear. If you’re diligent about deleting these emails, this could work as a great way to send yourself important reminders, especially since we already look at our email a lot; it will be practically in front of us.
If you would like more information about gmail and how it can be used in your business, please contact us.