Taming the Email Beast

In the electronic age, it is not just paper and things that create clutter all around us; even our computers can be full of clutter...and nothing is more clutter filled than an out of control email box!

For me, email comes in three categories Email I need - such as communication with my family, clients and my child's school

1. Email I might need - updates from my favorite stores, coupons, newsletters I have subscribed to

2. Email I don't need - spam, email lists I don't remember signing up for.

While there are lots of different ways to clean up your email box, in an effort to save time and be simple, I recommend these quick steps. For the emails you want to get:

• Create filters - most email providers now allow you to create labels or filters on incoming mail. You can either  have them diverted to another inbox labeled "priority" or you can color code them. I personally use different email colors for different clients and/or projects. This allows me to quickly identify these emails as I scan my inbox. You can also subscribe to services, such as SaneBox which intuitively knows what is important and pulls them out for you. There is a fee for the service (it is not a horrible amount) but if you are drowning in email, it would be well worth your money!

• Use IMAP - in this day of email being sent to computers, tablets and smart phones, nothing is more frustrating than cleaning out your inbox on one device, only to have to go through the whole process again on another device. When you use IMAP, your emails are stored on a server, when you delete or move an email on your computer; the email is moved on the server....it is dealt with once and for all! Then, when you go to another device, simply hit refresh and the changes will appear there as well!

For the emails you would like to get -  You know you should unsubscribe, but you don't want to - you might  miss a good deal if you unsubscribe!

• Change your email preferences - if a store is emailing you daily (or even three or four times a day) see if you can limit it to once a week, or month.

• Use a service that will summarize your emails, or "roll them up" into one email. I personally started using Unroll.Me at the beginning of the year and LOVE IT! This free service sweeps up all the emails that are newsletters, ads, and other "stuff" and gives me one summary email at the end of the day. You can chose when you get the email, and better yet, you can chose what should and should not be rolled up.  A great example is my daughter's teacher's emails were flagged by the system. Because I didn't want to wait 24 hours to see these emails, I elected to have them not rolled up. Unroll.Me will also unsubscribe you to emails - you do need to share you love of the service on FB in order to fulling enjoy this feature, but that is a small price to pay!
  

Emails you just don't want These type of emails come in two categories - spam and things you just need to get rid of. Sometimes these emails are from family - you are on your own there :)

• Spam - make sure you are using an email service and virus protector on your computer that filters Spam. If an email gets through your spam filter, use the providers reporting mechanism to report it as spam or phishing. For example, in gmail you can "label" it as spam or phishing, the system will remove it from your inbox and then that report is used to improve their filtering systems

• Unsubscribe - if you are getting a newsletter from a person you are not going to do business with, it is time to unsubscribe! My advice is to do it immediately, as soon as you see the email!
  

If you take 15-20 minutes today,  and one or two minutes to update daily/weekly, I am sure you can have a clutter free email box for all of 2014!! :)