Liberating My eMail Addresses
You can chose to not answer them, just hit delete. I've tried that, but
1. I lost important information that was buried in the junk,
2. The process of deleting is still time consuming and wasteful.
So when I read what a successful online marketer had done recently, I thought I had found a perfect answer that was right under my nose, UNSUBSCRIBE the intruders; cut them off for good and just keep a few important email addresses.
Unfortunately, unsubscribing is an incredibly boring process, once you've done it about 10 times. And it is also very time consuming. But I consoled myself with the vision of doing online marketing without junk mail.
It was wonderful getting about 5 to 10 emails each day, but only from very valuable contacts that provided me loads of content.
It's been about 3 to 4 weeks since I did this.
But somehow, after one month, my in basket is just as polluted with junk emails as before. All you have to do is answer one or two offers and your email grows out of control again.
So my current practice is to really assess the value of each email writer, and keep their emails to work on. The rest get automatically deleted by my browsers, and by me for the ones that get through.
The whole problem is that email marketing is still too important to completely shut it off.
If someone has a better solution, I would be thrilled to hear about it.
Recent Comments
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I wrote this post out of frustration, and knowing that we all suffer from email overload.
Still, I'm pleasantly surprised and grateful for all the comments I got. Even though many of us are using similar solutions, there were a few additional approaches that I can explore.
All the best to all of you fellow marketers,
Juan
Good post! We all experience this problem at some time or another. You have taken the best route of dealing with it. Nothing much else one can do. :>)
What I do is when they offer something free then I subscribe. Then I wait a couple of minutes and check my inbox. If the email is there then I go in and get my free download. Then I go back an unsubscribe then. I do keep the ones that I think will benefit me though.
I also do email marketing and have very few subscribers right now. I know this will grow with time. But, I don't send them junk and I only send 1 or 2 emails a week.
I know what you mean about not wanting to shut it off. I have received some really good ebooks that were free downloads that I have learned a lot from too!
I think that each person probably has their own way of handling their email. I would like to be able to wake up and not have 996 emails looking at me in my face daily. lol
What you say is so true...you end up putting up with a lot of junk to get the few gems you get from time to time.
Yeah, I know what you mean! I have five email addresses all full of stuff I don't need or want. and your right the emails you do need to save are buried in trash.
That's the scary part. You know there are a few valuable emails buried in the junk, and you don't want to miss them.
Great post, I think we all go through this and it is very time consuming. I use gmail and the filters seem to work very well. I take a look once a month to make sure they are.
Regards
Hudson
I probably average about 150+ emails a day and 90% is junk. I have HostGator plus Gmail and to me Gmail is better.
I think many of us rely on gmail to help with this problem...150+ emails, that's a lot...I don't know that I ever stopped to count them, probably for fear of the shock I'd get!
I switched over to Gmail. It has a great spam filter. It gets most automatically and once you mark an email as spam, emails from those people will always be sent to your spam box.
I get what you're saying, but the sheer volume makes me worry about the important material that might be lost...
I always take a quick scan of my spam box every couple of days, just in case. I'm not crazy about Gmail but I do love the free spam filter.
My new phrase is "so" which stands for shiny object. Just say"so what" and then hit delete
The only thing I can offer is that I use gmail. I can set those that are truly junk to be filtered. Then I don't see ANY from that sender again. If they have an unsubscribe I try to use that and it helps. But mostly gmail sends most junk mail right to the junk bin. I then go in and take a cursory glance to make sure I'm not loosing something important. Then I delete everything. Just know you are not alone. Great blog my friend!
I used to go in and delete my gmail spam folder on a regular basis. Now gmail automatically deletes any spam folder email that is one month old.
Thanks for your helpful feedback, and support.
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Before you Unsubscribe to an email, make sure it was truly something you subscribed too in the first place. There are a lot of phishing emails that have the unsubscribe options - you may be unsubscribing from one email and unknowingly be alerting the spammer that they found a warm body.... they will then add your email address to a list that they sell to others or simply hit you again with another wave of emails from different email address - I use gmail and rely that they will catch most spam - it does not catch all of it.
Thanks for your comment about unsubscribing and the possible phishing threats out there.