All the Different Email Addresses You Should Create (and What to Use Them For).

If you’re still using the same email address for everything, it’s time to diversify your inbox. Don’t make the same mistake I did by filling one inbox with complete nonsense that has nothing to do with what you actually want to receive and read. You probably already have separate email addresses for work, school, and your personal life, and many of us also have a dedicated spam address where we quickly end up with pop-ups—but you might find it useful to have a couple more of these addresses. Here are the email addresses I recommend creating.

You will need an email address to log into the apps.

I have a dedicated email address just for streaming services and various apps, so when Peacock or Hulu mysteriously logs me out on my TV, I can just reset the passwords using that dedicated email address without cluttering up my main address.

This is great because apps and services absolutely love sending you emails about discounts, special offers, or login reminders, and while you could spend a ton of time unsubscribing from them, you could also just forward them to your Gmail account, which you only open occasionally for new login reminder emails, leaving the rest of the junk to fester. I’m also just hesitant to unsubscribe from emails from services I occasionally need to receive emails from, like streamers and apps, since most of my two-factor authentication goes through my inbox. Separating these cases just makes sense.

To receive newsletters you will need an email address.

If you haven’t noticed, all your favorite news sites and even individual authors are enthusiastic about newsletters. Receiving the information you need straight to your inbox is great, but it’s much worse when it interferes with your ability to view the messages you actually need to complete more important daily tasks.

Creating a separate inbox just for newsletters allows you to receive a kind of curated content, similar to Apple News. When you want to read the latest news or the thoughts of a prominent intellectual, open this inbox and scroll through. And when you want to engage in real correspondence, simply click the link.

To earn extra money, you need an email address.

Here’s where I make a mistake: I don’t actually have one, at least not on a regular basis. I use my real email for all my little money-making ventures and projects, and this has become my main problem. When I was freelancing a lot, my email address was added to some freelance database, and now my personal inbox is literally clogged with PR pitches that I never open or read. They arrive so frequently that real correspondence from family members or people I’m trying to collaborate with gets lost.

If you’re smart (unlike me), you’ll create a separate email address dedicated exclusively to your work, whatever it may be. Whether you’re an influencer, a freelancer, a photographer, or a volunteer, everything that falls under the category of serious projects but isn’t your full-time job should be collected in one place.

Do this early on, when you’re just starting out. I’d love to create separate email addresses for my resale business, fitness class teaching, copywriting, and freelancing, but getting all my contacts in those industries to send emails to a new address instead of the old one would be a huge hassle. Creating one early on prevents this and also helps you switch to a different mode when corresponding with a potential client. I feel more confident addressing someone as “Lindsay Ellefson, MPH” or “Lindsay Ellefson, award-winning journalist” rather than simply “Lindsay Ellefson.” Creating something like [your name][your job title]@gmail.com will help you feel more confident.

Some tips for working with multiple email addresses

Consider also setting up an app-only email address for information about free trials. When the trial ends, the company will do its best to remind you that you can still sign up and pay them. Don’t let these endless emails bother you or waste your time. A day membership at the gym? An app-only email address. A free trial of a PDF editor or resume builder? An app-only email address. Need to connect to a public Wi-Fi network that, for some unknown reason, requires an email address? You already know. Just make sure you turn off notifications when you do so to keep your phone’s home screen from getting cluttered.

I also recommend using Gmail for all of this, as the Gmail app makes it incredibly easy to switch between different accounts right on your phone. You can even assign addresses to different Chrome profiles on your computer, which is incredibly helpful for me when I’m switching between different areas of my life. The only downside to using only Gmail is that it can be difficult to tell at first glance which address is receiving a message when you get a notification on your phone’s lock screen. However, this shouldn’t be a big issue, as for many of these situations, such as streamers, push notifications should be disabled entirely.

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