Here’s What Happens to Your Email Accounts When Merging Companies
Organizational mergers are chaotic, and one thing that tends to be lower on the priority list is email account merging.
Employees from both organizations may keep their email addresses, but typically, one group will merge their old and new addresses. For example, if a larger accounting firm acquires a smaller accounting firm, the employees at the smaller firm probably will merge their old and new email addresses.
But we often get questions about how that works, can clients still contact them using the old address and are there extra costs associated with using two email addresses?
Let’s break down the process of merging email accounts.
How Email Aliases Keep Old Addresses Working
When we merge two email accounts, you have a primary email address, which is generally the new one, and an alias, which is generally the old one. Emails sent to either address will appear in the same inbox.
“Employees from both organizations may keep their email addresses, but typically, one group will merge their old and new addresses.”
The old email address (alias) will continue to receive messages as long as the organization still owns the old domain. This will give your employees’ contacts time to transition without important messages being undelivered.
You can create 400 aliases for each Microsoft 365 business account, and there are no additional fees or licenses required.
Which Email Do You Want as Your From Address?
When an employee replies to a received email, the “From” address will always be the primary email address, even if the original message was sent to the alias address.
The “From” address can be the new or old address, but most companies tend to make it the new address to keep branding consistent.
Our advice is for employees to inform their contacts of the email change as soon as possible to avoid any confusion.
Managed IT Services in West Michigan
Is your organization merging with another company? We can make the email address merging process simple! Contact us to schedule a meeting about your organization’s merger and other information technology needs.
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