This Email Tip Will Change Your Life!

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Have you ever missed an important and time-sensitive email because you are:

  1. Deep in a four hour session with a client who wants every Alt under the sun?

  2. At your soul-sucking day job where you’re not really supposed to be on your phone, but you can definitely sneak a peak now and then?

  3. Trying to enjoy your life, while also not missing out on lucrative job offers?

Use your email for good!

Well, I’m keeping it short, sweet, and practical this week with a tip that has saved me so many times.

This is something I started doing back when I was still mostly an on-camera and stage actor. I would frequently get emails from my agents while I was working at the restaurant, and not see them until I was done with my shift.

Most restaurants won’t let you have your phone on you while you’re working, but I could keep it back of house.

However, even if I could check my email as I ran through the kitchen, often my agent emails would get sort of buried in all of the junk email that I get, so I wouldn’t see them as I quickly skimmed so I could get back on the floor to get table 21 their side of ranch.

The impact of this was that I would frequently miss out on opportunities. My agents might only have 5 or 6 open audition slots for a job, and whoever got back to them first got them.

Gotta get to surgery, but don’t want to miss an email from your agent?

My solution to this is something I STILL use to this day, even though I work from home and can stare at my email inbox all day willing clients to email me if I so desire.

But I don’t.

Instead, I set up text forwarding.

Now, instead of having to be GLUED to my email inbox, I can get texts for anything super important.

  • The automotive client who expects really fast turnaround.

  • The agent auditions I want to get in ASAP.

  • Or the casting director workshops that always sell out within a half hour.

You can get alerts by text for any of these.

Set up your email to change your life:

  1. Find your phone’s SMS address. This is your ten digit phone number followed by your carrier’s SMS gateway (i.e. 5555555555@txt.att.net). For a full list of carrier gateways, click here.

  2. Go into your email settings (on Gmail, once you click on the gear icon, you need to click on “See all settings”)

  3. Choose “Forwarding and POP/IMAP”

  4. Under Forwarding, click “Add forwarding address” and add your phone’s SMS address.

  5. Click to proceed

  6. Go to the tab that says “Filters and Blocked Addresses”

  7. Toward the bottom of the page, choose “Create a new filter”

  8. Choose your settings.

    If it’s a single person whose emails you’d like notices for, put their email address in.

    OR if you want to be notified about any and all emails coming from anyone at that company (recommended for clients and agents), then put *@domain.com. So, for instance, if you wanted to be informed about any emails coming from anyone at Atlas, you would put *@atlastalent.com.

    However, you can also choose to put in subject line notices as well. Say you have a web form on your website, and the subject line automatically says “rate inquiry” or “booking request.” You could put those in the subject line and leave the email address field blank. You can get creative here with how you use this for your own purposes.

  9. Click “Create Filter”

  10. On the next page, click “Forward it to:” and enter your phone’s SMS address here.

    And that’s it!

If your email is not Gmail (hey, it happens), I recommend typing “Forward emails to text [INSERT YOUR EMAIL PROVIDER HERE]” into AskJeeves and see what the steps are for Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, or any other email provider I’m not sure still exists. (GOOGLE IS ALL. ALL HAIL GOOGLE!)

If it involves dead animals, fire, and knives, it’s either a recipe or a ritual, and NOT the directions for creating an email filter

Make sure you double check the instructions seem somewhat in line with the above. If the instructions include anything like “Whip egg whites until stiff peaks form” or “Anoint the head of the innocent with the blood of the sacrificial goat,” then you might accidentally make a viral cake recipe or summon demons. Always check your sources!

Well, that’s it for this week, friends! Hope this helps you become a VO Superstar!