Manage Multiple Business Email Accounts with a Unified Inbox

What Is a Unified Inbox?

A unified inbox is a single email inbox that combines all of your mail from separate email platforms. Some business email providers (including us!) allow you to integrate your professional email with your existing email account. That way, you can check a single inbox and see all of your emails in one place.

To keep your inbox from turning into a fire hose of disorganized emails, most platforms have automation tools you can use to sort different types of email into folders. That way, you can focus on your high priority emails first and then review other emails when you have time, without switching back and forth between apps.

Learn how to integrate Northwest professional email with your existing email platform.

Using automation to organize your unified inbox

Automation tools can sort your emails by category to keep your inbox organized. You can do this using filters and labels on Gmail, or using folders and rules on Outlook. For example, you can label emails from your most important client as “Read first” and company newsletter emails as “Read later.”

Managing Business Email Accounts with Multiple Users

Managing your own email accounts is one thing, but when multiple people are using a single email account, there’s a different set of issues. Some things to consider when creating a shared business email account are:

• Security. The more people who share login credentials for an email account, the more likely it is that those login credentials will be compromised. It’s important to set up multi-factor authentication for your email account, especially if more than one person has access to it. Tools like the Google Authenticator App make setting up multi-factor authentication easier for teams.
• Confusion. When multiple people share an inbox, it’s more likely that important emails will get deleted or opened without a response. If there are no guidelines around opening and responding to emails, you could end up with a chaotic situation where customer emails get ignored.

Many business email hosts (like us!) allow you to create multiple email accounts that use your business domain. For example, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc. With multiple accounts, employees can have separate login credentials, making your email more secure.

That isn’t to say email accounts should never have multiple users. There are times when a shared inbox makes sense, such as for customer support, HR, or other employee teams. In this case, it’s a good idea to customize the access permissions for each account, so that an account with 30 users doesn’t have access to sensitive financial information that only 5 people actually need to see.

Learn about choosing a secure email provider.

How to Integrate Your Business and Personal Email with Northwest Registered Agent

It’s easy to integrate Northwest Professional Email with your existing email account. The process is slightly different depending on the email platform. When you sign up, we’ll email you with step-by-step instructions for integrating Northwest email with Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail.

Here are the general steps for integrating your email on most platforms:

1. Open the email platform on mobile or desktop.
2. Go to Settings and select “Add Account.”
3. Enter your email address.
4. Choose the account type (IMAP or POP3). IMAP is recommended for accessing email on multiple devices.
5. Create a username and password, using your full email address as your username.
6. Configure your server settings. (This varies by platform, so follow our emailed instructions.)
7. Follow the prompts to finish setting up your email account.

If you have any issues integrating your email, we have real humans standing by who can walk you through the process over the phone. Just give us a call at 509-768-2249.

Integrated, Secure Professional Email