Love it or hate it, email isn’t going anywhere. In fact, there are currently more than 3.9 billion email users in the world and 293 billion emails are sent each day.
With email becoming an integral part of our lives, one email account is sometimes not enough to handle the different types of correspondence in our day-to-day lives.
While having multiple email accounts is considered an effective email management practice, it usually doesn’t take long before it spirals out of control. After all, it’s stressful enough trying to stay on top of a single email inbox, let alone checking several each day.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to manage multiple email accounts without impacting your productivity, but first, let’s take a quick look at the various reasons why it’s a good idea to have more than one email in the first place.
The most common reason for creating multiple email accounts is to separate personal from work-related conversations.
Using one email address for business and personal matters can work if you only need to deal with a few emails a day. But as your contact list grows and your number of unread emails goes from 16 to 160, the need for a separate inbox becomes crucial.
Suppose you manage more than one business, project or client. in this case, you may want to create a different email for each type of job. for example, if you are a freelance writer and also have an online store, it would be handy to have two different email accounts so you don’t confuse one with the other.
if you tend to subscribe to online forums, newsletters, free e-books or industry reports, it’s a good idea to have an alternative email for this purpose to protect your identity and maintain your inbox private spam-free.
With multiple email accounts, it’s much easier to focus on one area of responsibility at a time. Of course, you don’t want to spend more time triaging emails than doing the actual work.
Whether you want to achieve zero inbox or just find a way to manage your emails more efficiently, we hope these tips help you get one step closer to your goal.
1. maintain an email account for a purpose
First, review all email accounts you currently have and determine what categories of email you typically receive. Do any of them overlap in any way? Do you receive two very different types of emails in the same inbox?
For example, if you’re a project manager juggling multiple projects with different teams, chances are your messages will get mixed up in any order. you can try setting up sort filters, but you’ll still have to go through all of them, switching between different contexts.
On the other hand, if you have one email account for your newsletter subscriptions and another that you use to receive special offers, some of these emails are sure to turn into spam. it might be a good idea to combine them and route these various messages to one email inbox.
Keeping in mind your individual needs and workflow, try to maintain an email account for each type of purpose.
If it makes sense, create a separate email for each project you manage. this way, whenever you start checking your emails for the day, you can relax in a certain frame of mind, knowing what kind of emails you will receive.
2. use a desktop email client
Using a desktop email client is a great way to manage multiple email accounts in one place.
A desktop email client is an application installed on your PC that typically offers more features than a webmail system, such as snoozing notifications or scheduling messages.
There is a wide range of desktop email clients to choose from, including Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, and Mailbird. make sure you choose an app that allows you to add more than one account and you can quickly switch between accounts.
The only drawback is that you can only access your email client from the computer it’s installed on, so if you tend to use different computers, you’ll have to log in to your email from the web.
3. bring your actionable emails to your to-do list
Since email is the primary form of business communication, it’s no surprise that many of our tasks live in our inbox.
This begs the question: should you use your email inbox as a to-do list?
While this may seem like a more efficient way to do it, it’s important to keep in mind that email covers only a fraction of everything you need to do in work and life. there are other tasks that don’t come from emails and can only be managed in a dedicated task manager.
Using Pleexy, you can sync multiple Outlook accounts with the task manager of your choice: Todoist or Microsoft To Do. Whenever you receive an email that requires further action, all you have to do is flag the message in outlook and it will instantly appear in the specified folder in your task manager.
You can also copy existing emails marked with follow-up flags by simply selecting the Outlook folder they are in. you can sync due dates, priority, and complete or delete the email or task from either side of the integration. pleexy will instantly sync changes from one side to the other.
4. set up folders and filters to categorize your emails
Folders help you limit the number of emails you store, making your inbox more manageable. organize your emails into folders just like you would files stored on your computer.
when new email arrives, save it in a folder where it belongs. if it’s useless, delete it. The fewer emails you have in your inbox, the easier it is to retrieve something you might need later.
The categories you apply to your folders will depend on your needs and preferences. For a more refined email management system, you can create main folders and subfolders for things like meeting requests, company announcements, training reminders, and more.
To automate the process of filing your emails in the proper folder, set up automatic filters. Filters are a set of rules that classify your emails based on sender, subject lines, or certain keywords. the best email providers have native support for this feature.
5. schedule your email signups
email is addictive. The hardest thing about checking multiple email inboxes is not being able to stop once you’ve started, draining your mental focus and sucking up all the productive hours of your day.
To make room for deep work, try decreasing the amount of time you spend checking your emails.
Set aside several blocks of time to respond to emails throughout the day. just be sure to limit the amount of time for each session. check each email account in succession and prioritize your most important messages first.
6. link multiple gmail accounts together
gmail is the most popular email service today, with over a billion active monthly users worldwide. so it should be safe to assume you have one or more gmail accounts.
if you have a gmail account that you check more often than others, you can use it as a master account that will receive all messages from all your other accounts.
When you link all your gmail accounts, you can manage all your messages in one place and send email from any account. this should save you a ton of time that you would have otherwise spent logging in and out or jumping back and forth between the different accounts you use. this article explains in more detail how.
Just because you’ve decided to set up multiple email accounts to bring order to your digital life doesn’t mean you have to bear the brunt of email overload.
We hope these tips will help you manage your emails more efficiently and see a significant improvement in your productivity. take the time to develop an email management system that works for you and you’ll be able to stay on top of all your inboxes with ease.