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How To Win At Email

nikilster.com

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Re: How To Win At Email

#11

Post by nikilster »

onster wrote: post #8

Just turn on Gmail's Priority Inbox feature and be done with it.

I tried that but found that this worked much better for me personally. Also I had emails in very different levels of "response required" - email lists (don't need to look at vs response required immediately).

Also a big plus of this approach is feeling like you are "done" with email. I know it seems a bit complicated but its actually quite simple - most of the setup is a one time upfront cost of about 20 min. Try it out and let me know what you think about this strategy!

Re: How To Win At Email

#12

Post by jusben1369 »

btipling wrote: post #7

I'll just put this here: http://www.streak.com It's pretty awesome at this kind of email management stuff right inside gmail.

I was/am a big fan and a power user. I think it's worth pointing out around two weeks ago Streak automatically put a signature file into any Streak based email without asking you to opt in. I thought suddenly dropping "Lovingly managed by Streak" as a new signature file without permission showed poor judgement or desperation.

Re: How To Win At Email

#13

Post by brbcoding »

The #1 thing that has helped me to keep emails organized is taking advantage of the + notation that gmail allows... Every store or website I give my email address to, I simply append (emailaddress+storename@gmail.com) to my email address, which allows for easy filtering later. It also shows me who has been giving out my email address :)

Re: How To Win At Email

#14

Post by nikilster »

brbcoding wrote: post #13

The #1 thing that has helped me to keep emails organized is taking advantage of the + notation that gmail allows... Every store or website I give my email address to, I simply append (emailaddress+storename@gmail.com) to my email address, which allows for easy filtering later. It also shows me who has been giving out my email address :)

Whoa no way - I totally didn't know about this. Awesome, so cool! Thanks so much!

Re: How To Win At Email

#15

Post by artursapek »

The best thing I ever did in Gmail was filter the word "unsubscribe" to skip the inbox and go into a "Newsletters" label. Whenever I peek in there I see nothing but garbage, dozens of emails a day that I wouldn't have cared about. Right now it's sitting at 5,162 unread emails. It keeps my inbox almost always being things that are relevant or interesting.

I've shared this with a few friends who love it. It's pretty flawless. It's never caused me to miss any important emails (that I'm aware of).

Re: How To Win At Email

#16

Post by Bro_Merch »

artursapek wrote: post #15

The best thing I ever did in Gmail was filter the word "unsubscribe" to skip the inbox and go into a "Newsletters" label. Whenever I peek in there I see nothing but garbage, dozens of emails a day that I wouldn't have cared about. Right now it's sitting at 5,162 unread emails. It keeps my inbox almost always being things that are relevant or interesting. I've shared this with a few friends who love it. It's pretty fl…

That's the most brilliant simple solution I've ever heard.

Re: How To Win At Email

#17

Post by nikilster »

artursapek wrote: post #15

The best thing I ever did in Gmail was filter the word "unsubscribe" to skip the inbox and go into a "Newsletters" label. Whenever I peek in there I see nothing but garbage, dozens of emails a day that I wouldn't have cared about. Right now it's sitting at 5,162 unread emails. It keeps my inbox almost always being things that are relevant or interesting. I've shared this with a few friends who love it. It's pretty fl…

Yeah! That's basically Step #1 for me except I was too scared to actually unsubscribe (especially in college). Turns out I don't read any of them and for the most part my life is still good :)

Re: How To Win At Email

#18

Post by icelancer »

brbcoding wrote: post #13

The #1 thing that has helped me to keep emails organized is taking advantage of the + notation that gmail allows... Every store or website I give my email address to, I simply append (emailaddress+storename@gmail.com) to my email address, which allows for easy filtering later. It also shows me who has been giving out my email address :)

A significant amount of websites filter on the + and will throw an error as an invalid character in the email string. Very annoying.

Re: How To Win At Email

#19

Post by e12e »

artursapek wrote: post #15

The best thing I ever did in Gmail was filter the word "unsubscribe" to skip the inbox and go into a "Newsletters" label. Whenever I peek in there I see nothing but garbage, dozens of emails a day that I wouldn't have cared about. Right now it's sitting at 5,162 unread emails. It keeps my inbox almost always being things that are relevant or interesting. I've shared this with a few friends who love it. It's pretty fl…

That filter doesn't prevent you from reading email lists?

Re: How To Win At Email

#20

Post by e12e »

icelancer wrote: post #18
brbcoding wrote: post #13

The #1 thing that has helped me to keep emails organized is taking advantage of the + notation that gmail allows... Every store or website I give my email address to, I simply append (emailaddress+storename@gmail.com) to my email address, which allows for easy filtering later. It also shows me who has been giving out my email address :)

A significant amount of websites filter on the + and will throw an error as an invalid character in the email string. Very annoying.

Yes, it's very annoying.

I don't use gmail, but used to use username (prefix-username@) with qmail - and at some point had to have email at a site that used Exim with standard setup - that allowed username (prefix+user@) -- but not with a dash (it is possible to configure Exim to do this - but with qmail it is standard).

That's how I discovered that a lot of sites erroneously filter out + from the username part.

Now host my own email with Exim - but rather than use a prefix, I've just set up Exim to route all users at all subdomains to my inbox, so I can use adresses like:

site@s.example.com (s for spam). So far I that have worked fine.

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