What’s so good about an alias?

Since I’ve been working for myself, I’ve found myself sending out small bug and feature reports more often lately. I tried appending a small message requesting a bitcoin donation to one of these emails, and the recipient in fact donated. I think I might be on to something!

How to do it

In a perfect world, I would be able to create a special email account for sending out these bug reports that would have a tip message signature. After looking into various options available to me, I found that this functionality comes with Gmail out of the box! Here’s what you do:

1. Open Gmail settings and navigate to the Accounts and Import tab.
2. Under the Send Mail As section, click Add another email address you own.
3. For Email address, enter [your gmail address]+[alias]@gmail.com, keep Treat as an alias checked, and click Next Step ».
4. Refresh the page. Then, open settings and navigate to the General tab.
5. Under the Signature section, select your new alias from the drop down. Enter your desired signature and click Save Changes at the bottom.

Now, when sending an email, select the alias in the from dropdown and your signature will automatically be appended. In fact, this alias is treated like a completely separate email account in Gmail, so anything you can do with a specific email account, you can do with the alias. This includes signatures, labels, and filtering.

Links

Send mail from a different address or alias - Gmail Help