How to (Best) Change Your Email

Email is definitely a part of your brand. Every single day you're sending and receiving messages.

What does your email address say to your audience?

If your email isn't you@yourname.com or yourname@gmail.com—you may want to update your email. Common examples include:

• Graduating from an educational account.

• Moving on from a work account.

• Discontinuing an account from AOL, Hotmail, or your cable provider.

• Changing from maiden to married name.

My goal today is to make this easy for you—because it can be! If you’ve ever changed your physical address, you’ll pretty much follow the same steps. Don’t let your fears of "tech" stop you from a completely professional web presence!

1. Create New ADDRESS.

My suggestion is you@yourname.com. This becomes a daily reminder of your website address. 

The best way to set this up is through Google Workspace.* While this costs $6/month (over the free yourname@gmail.com account), one job or gig would cover this $72 annual investment!

With Google Workspace, we can also get fancy and create "aliases" for your inbox such as:

• hello@yourname.com

• team@yourname.com

• news@yourname.com

• orders@yourname.com

• legal@yourname.com

• ...all in one inbox!

Furthermore, I recommend Google email for a few reasons:

• Google is the world's No. 1 search engine—streamline your web presence here!

• Google provides you with other incredible tools—YouTube, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, etc.

• Google has superior email filtering, mobile apps, customizations/integrations, etc.

Once you've created your new account (Google Workspace or Gmail "onboarding" wizards also make this easy), proceed to step two!

2. Forward Mail from old address.

Set up automatic forwarding of incoming emails from your old address to your new one. I know this might seem technical, but it's really not that difficult.

Unfortunately, I can't cover every variable in this blog, but a quick Google search 😉😉 such as "how to set up automatic forwarding from ____ to Google" should provide you with a visual guide.

The benefit of simple forwarding is that you don't have to send any sort of "I've changed my email address" messaging. Most people do this through a vacation auto-responder or BCC announcement. This way, you can just reply from your new account and people will get the picture! 🤗

3. Consider Moving Old Mail + Folders.

I'm confident you can handle the first two steps. Step three is optional... but suggested.

In tech, "data migration" is a big, fancy word for moving over all of your old sh!t. If you're already accustomed to juggling multiple email accounts on each device, this might be irrelevant. However, what I try to do is help people streamline their email. It can get very tricky to find what you're looking for on the go when you have too many inboxes to search!

If you're open to it, I'd suggest streamlining to ONE inbox.  If you set up a new Google Workspace* account, you can get instant and incredible customer support to walk you through this entire process. You're welcome to set up a "power hour" strategy session with me and I can help handle all of this, too—even remotely.  

Regardless, I'd suggest a trained technician (whether yours truly or a rep from Google) help you with the "data migration" portion. This way, you have ONE email account with all of your contacts, calendar appointments, and an easily searchable email archive. Not only are all incoming emails from your old account(s) being auto-delivered to your new inbox, but you can also search for historic emails, auto-fill sender names, and not lose any appointments from your digital calendar.

Ready to make the change? Click here to schedule a time with me or click here to set up Google Workspace* or Gmail on your own. 

*I'm a proud affiliate of Google Workspace. I may earn a very small commission if you use this link. Cheers! ☕️