Writing the same email to person after person – even if it is a simple copy and paste job – is tedious. It's a waste of time, energy, and resources, which is why email groups have existed for just about as long as email itself. They offer a simple way to cluster recipients and send the same message to all relevant people.

However, each email provider has a slightly different method for creating email groups, and using them to communicate can quickly lead to messy and confusing threads. To navigate this, we're going to take a look at when email groups might be useful; how to create a group in Yahoo! mail, Gmail, and Outlook; and explore whether there might be a better way for modern email users.