If you are feeling more and more overwhelmed as you check your work or personal inbox, you are not alone! It can be difficult to reach the messages that you need the most when your inbox is filled with promotions and spam messages. The issue is that most people aren’t sure why they are receiving so many emails or where these messages are coming from. To give you a little bit of insight as to why you are receiving so many emails, we are going over a few of the most common types of mass emails sent using mass email software. From there, we’ll guide you through a few strategies to help you manage your inbox so it is slightly less overwhelming each day. Plus, we’ll be showing you how companies use gmail mass emails to reach their audience and how you can curate the promotional messages that land in your inbox. Let’s get started!
What are Promotional Emails?
Promotional Gmail mass emails emails are sent out by businesses to engage with their audience
Sometimes promotional emails are useful.
If your inbox is already filled to the brim with unwanted messages, then it can be difficult to tell spam messages from promotional messages. However, they are actually quite different. The main difference that separates promotion from spam is that you willingly gave your email address to a specific business. You may have handed over your information to fill out a form, enter a contest, sign up for a newsletter, or to receive a coupon. No matter how you initially interacted with the business, you opted in to receive messages.
Though you may have too many promotional messages in your inbox, you should not be worried about the messages themselves. If you willingly give your address to a company, the most they will do is send you updates and incentives about their business. You will probably find that there are some promotional messages that you want to keep in your inbox because they help you keep track of loyalty programs or give you important information about businesses you frequent. Overall, these types of Gmail mass emails are harmless apart from the sometimes overwhelming volume coming from different businesses all at once.
What are Spam Emails?
Unlike promotional Gmail mass emails, spam emails are sent without your knowledge and can have insidious contents
Spam emails can be detrimental to your company and personal information.
The major difference that separates promotional Gmail mass emails from spam is your knowledge and consent. If you begin to receive emails from a business that you have never heard of before or purchased from, you can assume that the message is spam. Spam messages are also generally a bit pushier with the language and content presented in the message. For example, spam messages tend to use all caps, make extraordinary claims, or use misleading subject lines to grab your attention.
Luckily, consumers have become much more aware of spam messages and the dangers associated with them. Many spam messages have insidious intent in the form of identity theft attempts and corporate phishing scams. Because interacting with these messages can have potentially disastrous consequences, it is best to disregard messages that you think are spam altogether.
Now that we know the difference between promotional mass emails and spam emails, it’s time to learn how to manage both types of messages clogging up your inbox.
How Can I Manage Promotional Emails?
If you’re getting emails from every company you’ve ever purchased a product from, you probably need help managing your inbox
Promotional emails can get overwhelming.
There are lots of reasons for you to give out your email address—a free trial of a product, a game, an online shopping order—but that doesn’t mean you need to be overwhelmed by promotional messages. That’s why we’re offering our top tips to manage your inbox. Let’s dive in!
Create a Dedicated Email Account for Promotions
One of the easiest solutions to an overwhelming amount of Gmail mass email promotions is to simply create a second address. When you create a designated email address for promotions, you can give out your address without worrying about the inevitable promotions that will come in the future. Of course, it is beneficial to keep some promotional messages in your main inbox—shipping notifications for example—so you don’t need to automatically put all of your promotions in a separate address.
When you create a new address for your promotional messages, you allow for more room in your main personal or work inbox so you can access important messages as quickly as possible.
Filter Your Main Inbox
A second strategy for cleaning up your inbox of promotional messages is using a filter. Filters help identify important emails versus unimportant emails in your inbox. To be clear, this is a filter that you will create—it is not a spam filter. By establishing a filter, you can choose which types of promotional messages you want to reach your inbox. For example, you may only want shipping information to reach your inbox. In that case, you can access the settings in your email server and set a rule to filter out all promotional emails except for shipping notifications. Once your filter rules are established, you can look forward to a much more simplified inbox.
How Can I Manage Spam Emails?
Now that we know more about managing your promotional emails, it’s time to explore how you can prevent spam from reaching your inbox
Don’t get fooled by phishing scams!
While managing promotional emails is about identifying which types of messages you want in your inbox, managing spam is about preventing spam from reaching your inbox. To make sure you don’t accidentally click on a harmful spam message, you should follow these steps.
Flag Spam Messages as Spam
If you are receiving unsolicited messages, the first thing you should do is tell your email server that these messages are spam. To do this, all you have to do is click the box next to the email and choose the “report as spam” option. From there, your email server will automatically block the address from sending you any more messages and will flag the address.
Protect Your Email Address
Beyond reporting emails as spam, you need to protect your email address to prevent companies from sending you emails in the first place. The first way to do this is to be conscious of who you give your email address to—especially for your work email address.
It is also advisable to make your email address private on all social media accounts. This is especially true for sites like Facebook and LinkedIn where many people’s addresses are readily available on their profile. Businesses that send spam emails most commonly get their address lists from publicly available sources like these. So, if you are wondering where people get your address, it is probably because you have it listed on your profile.
Since we spend so much time reading emails each day, it is important to make sure that your inbox is optimized to your preferences. By using our tips, you can clean up your inbox and make sure that only the most important messages are coming across your desk. When your inbox is running efficiently, you can get back to the important things in your life and at your job.