Sunday, April 06, 2008

How Many Email Addresses Should I have?

I am kinda embarrassed to say how many email addresses I currently have because I have so many that I have forgotten the actual number. I started out like everyone else with one and that one happened to be created almost 15 years ago, does anyone remember the Internet service Prodigy? Well that was my very first email address. I then went on to get an email from this little upstart company some of you might have heard of called AOL. I no longer have an AOL address but my oldest current email address is about to celebrate its 10 year anniversary.

Ten years of having a Yahoo email address is not really that great but I would challenge you all to find out what is your oldest current email address and can you beat 10 years. If so please post how long you have had it and let me know if you have saved any emails from that address from so long ago. I have never deleted any of my emails from Yahoo and probably never will. Yes I KNOW I should delete the old ones but it really is a kick to see some of the emails I sent and received from people 10 years ago.

So at present count I think I have about 45+ email addresses both professional and personal and YES I do check them all. Some I don't check as frequent but I am very good and creating folders and setting up rules in Microsoft Outlook to keep most of them organized. My good friend Peggy Duncan who is a Professional Productivity Expert thinks I am crazy to have so many email addresses and even more crazy that I never delete any of the emails I get. Don't get me wrong I do delete most of the spam but the rest is archived and backed up on a regular bassist.

I am sure I don't hold the record for one person having so many email addresses. Who do you know that has more?

As a rule of thumb most small businesses should only have as many email addresses as they need to get their business done. If you are a soloprenuer like myself I would go with 3 professional email addresses to start. The first one you should have is your main email address Yourname@Yourcompany.com then I would go with info@yourcompany.com and sales@yourcompany.com I would then get 2 free personal email addresses from any of the free email services say gmail.com and yahoo.com. Use these email address for things you really don't want to come into your business email address or things you think you may get more spam then legitimate email. If you need more, I say GO FOR IT but only if you can keep track of them.
Don't lose any business because you forgot to check one of your many email addresses.

So, how many email addresses should you have? As many as you can keep track of and not have to hire someone to do it for you.

1 comment:

Brent Leary said...

Jeff I couldn't agree more with you with respect to getting a professional email address. Nothing say "tacky" like seeing an email address like "BigDaddy0102@hotmail.com" on a business card.

And when I see something like that, "BigDaddy" shouldn't hold his breathe waiting for any emails from me.