How to Send a Notification of Email Change

Whether you're changing the email address attached to an existing account or creating a new email account, it's not a complicated process to notify your personal and/or business contacts. Send them a basic update message through your email service and follow up with at least one other notification method.

Before you send a notification, make certain it contains all the information the people in your address book need to remain in contact with you after the change takes place. The notification should include the new address and the date when you plan to permanently stop using your old address. For example, "I've decided to change my email address to [address]. I'm going to stop using my existing address on [date]. Please update your address books. Thank you!"

If you're making a change that affects both personal and business contacts, send the notification to each group separately so you're not sharing work contacts with family and friends or vice versa. When contacting people within the same group, protect the privacy of anyone who doesn't want her email address shared by using the BCC field to hide it from the recipients in the To field. Additionally, many email services automatically flag as a potential spammer any account that sends one email to a lot of recipients. Unless your service permits mass mailings, send the message to less than 20 recipients at a time.

Most email services offer a "Vacation Response" or "Out of Office" tool that automatically sends a custom "away" message to anyone who sends you an email on a day when you're not actively checking messages. If your new email address is attached to a separate account, you can also use this tool to notify anyone you forgot to contact about the change. After you switch to your new address, locate the tool in the old account's settings, paste the address notification message you wrote in the custom automated message field, turn on the feature and leave it on for about a month.

Anyone in your address book might miss your important message if, for example, you accidentally typed an address incorrectly or used an old address, or the message ended up in a spam folder. Post your message as a status update on online social networks and interest group pages or, if applicable, send it to contacts through a chat service. Additionally, if you're changing a business email address, consider telling your clients, customers or vendors about the new contact information via postcard.