Smart Filters let you choose which kinds of emails you care about and which kinds you don't. In this guide, learn about Smart Filters and how you can use them to more easily manage your inbox.
Smart Filters are pre-built email filters built around common topics or priorities, like Receipts, Security Notices, or Calendar Invites. Like the filters you create in your email client, they can determine whether an email you get is an email you want. Unlike those filters, however, they don't require you to build anything extra. Instead, you can select a Smart Filter in your dashboard, and every email that matches that filter will be left in your inbox automatically.
While Trusted Contacts handle emails from people you know, Smart Filters handle emails from people you don't. Even if an email isn't from someone you know, it might still have content you care about. Smart Filters make it easier to pick out specific emails by their content alone, no matter who sent them.
For example, you may want to receive shipment tracking updates on a recent online purchase, but you may not care about receiving promotional newsletters from the retailer you purchased it from. Or perhaps you want to get updates on your recently booked flight, but you don't have any interest in receiving other flight promotions from the airline.
Smart Filters get pretty specific, so you can pick out precisely which emails you want to see.
Under the hood, Smart Filters work a lot like the filters in your email client. They take keywords commonly found in emails and combine them with ANDs, ORs, and NOTs to create complex rules that define which emails match and which emails don't.
To be as accurate as possible, Smart Filters contain a lot of detail: they're built around lengthy lists of keywords—lists that have taken us a lot of time, expertise, and data to create. These keyword lists take into consideration things like similes, syntax, common phrases, different wordings, and much more. Smart Filters can also use the extra data in an email—data that you don't see when you read them in your email client—to get more accurate results. (If you're curious about what extra data comes in an email, you can see it for yourself! Learn how to view email source in Gmail, or learn how to view email source in Outlook.)
Every time you receive a new email that isn't from one of your Trusted Contacts, InMoat checks it against all the Smart Filters you've selected.
*As a friendly reminder, InMoat never deletes nor modifies the content of your emails. All it does is move emails from one place to another, so you don't ever have to worry about losing anything important.
To select the Smart Filters you want:
Every email that matches one of the Smart Filters you've selected will now be left in your inbox, and every other email will be moved to your @InMoat folder.
InMoat comes with a library of pre-built filters based on common priorities. Below are some of the most frequently used filters.
To view a comprehensive list of the different types of Smart Filters and how they work, you can read more in the Filters Library section of the Knowledge Base.
We're constantly working to improve and expand our Smart Filter options. If you're looking for a new filter to meet your precise needs, let us know. Our email experts will work with you to design a bespoke filter. You can learn more about how to request a custom filter here.
If you have any other questions about our Smart Filters, please send a note at support@inmoat.com and a member of our team will reach out to you directly.