Shared Addresses and Aliases: info, sales and Other Department Addresses

Almost every company has addresses such as info@company.com or sales@company.com on its website and business cards. But in many of them, these addresses were tied to one person’s mailbox years ago, and now nobody knows exactly where their email goes. The result is inquiries that go unanswered, or that, once an employee leaves, end up in a mailbox nobody opens anymore.

Four tools with four uses

• Alias: A second address whose messages go straight to an existing mailbox. For example, a.rezaei@ and ali.rezaei@ both go to the same mailbox. It suits different forms of one person’s name, or an old address that must stay active.
• Forwarder: A copy of messages is sent to another address, sometimes even outside the company.
• Group or distribution list: One address whose messages reach several people at once. Each member sees the message in their own mailbox.
• Shared mailbox: A standalone mailbox with its own folders that several people can access. Messages, replies and sent emails are all kept in one place.

Which one for which job?

• A general address such as info: A group or shared mailbox, not an alias on one person’s mailbox. That way, messages aren’t left unattended when someone is away or leaves.
• A sales or support team: A shared mailbox is the best option; everyone can see which messages have been answered, and the history of customer correspondence stays with the company.
• Internal announcements to a department: A group or distribution list is enough.
• An employee who has left the company: Don’t delete their mailbox right away. For a while, convert it to a shared mailbox or route it to their replacement’s mailbox with an alias, and set an autoreply that gives the new address.

Exact features, including how shared mailboxes and shared folders are accessed, depend on the type and version of the mail server.

Reply from the shared address, not a personal one

If a customer emails sales@ and gets a reply from a staff member’s personal address, their next message goes to that personal address and the company no longer sees it. Set users up so they can reply from the department address; many business mail servers support sending as an alias or on behalf of a shared mailbox.

Forwarding to personal email: don’t

Automatically forwarding work email to personal mailboxes such as Gmail takes company information out of your control. Forwarded messages may also fail SPF checks and land in spam, or not be delivered at all.

If someone needs email outside the office, set up their work mailbox on their phone with IMAP.

A few design tips

• Avoid a catch-all mailbox that accepts mail for every wrong address too; it attracts a large volume of spam.
• Keep role addresses such as postmaster@ and abuse@; internet standards provide for them as contacts for email issues.
• Create role addresses for recurring external matters, such as billing@ for invoices or it@ for service providers, so these relationships don’t depend on a single person.
• Keep public addresses published on the website behind strong spam filtering, and where possible use a contact form instead of publishing the address.

Documentation

Keep a simple list: each address, its type (alias, group or shared mailbox), its members or destinations, and an owner. Review this list whenever employees join or leave.

Checklist

• info and other general addresses go to a group or shared mailbox
• Teams reply from the department address
• There is no automatic forwarding to personal email
• Catch-all is disabled
• Mailboxes of departed employees have a defined plan
• The list of addresses and the owner of each is up to date

ITPlus724 engineers can design and implement your company’s email address structure on SmarterMail so that no email is ever left unattended.