How to Clear Your Inbox and Block Unwanted Emails in 2022
Some days, you may spend the first hour of your workday going through all of your emails and trying to sort out the essential things from the pile of garbage that floods your inbox every day. Ain’t nobody got time for that! It shouldn’t be a full-time job to dig for important emails, but it seems like each day there is more spam than the last!
Fortunately, there are some steps we can take to try and minimize spam, clear out our inboxes, and prevent any critical emails from getting lost in the mix. Keep reading for our best tips on claiming back your inbox!
Report Frequent Spam Mail
Most email service providers today already do a lot of the heavy lifting for us. Surely you’ve noticed the “spam” and “social” folders in Gmail or the “junk” folder in Outlook. The providers do their best to send any suspected spam directly to these folders so that you don’t have to see it. Yet somehow, plenty of junk emails make it to our inbox each day.
The good news is that you can edit the controls on these folders to block specific emails or senders while allowing others. If spam emails still find their way into your inbox, report them as junk so that similar future emails will be more carefully filtered.
Unsubscribe to Repetitive Marketing
Often we subscribe to future emails without realizing it, or we’re forced into it when accepting terms and conditions. If you’re receiving a weekly newsletter that you’re no longer interested in or constant sales emails from a store you shopped at once three years ago, unsubscribing may be a better option than sending the email to spam. That way, you can still receive future emails from that source that may be important to you.
Usually, you’ll find the unsubscribe option at the very bottom of the email. From there, it will take you to a webpage where you may have the choice to unsubscribe from certain types of emails or everything from that sender. Unfortunately, some senders make it difficult or confusing to unsubscribe from all emails fully.
Block Relentless or Sketchy Senders
If you’ve tried unsubscribing or reporting as spam and emails are still making it through to your inbox, the final step is to block all further emails from that sender. You may consider blocking emails right away that appear like they could be phishing for information or if you’re not sure how they obtained your email address to begin with.
When you block an email, it won’t get sent to spam. Rather, any emails from that sender will never show up in your inbox at all. On Gmail, to block email from a specific sender, open the email and click the three little dots on the right side. You should see the block option in the drop-down. It’s a similar process for Outlook. Go to the email, click the junk drop-down menu and choose block.
Use Multiple Email Addresses
Whether intentional or not, a lot of the spam or marketing emails we get on a daily basis are because we gave out our email addresses. Companies have a number of tricks up their sleeves to get their hands on our email addresses. For example, they may force you to create an account to gain access to their product, request your email in exchange for a free tool, or ask for an email during checkout. Many companies will then turn around and sell your email address to others.
One way to prevent companies from getting access to your email address is to have a “junk address” to input anytime you’re concerned your email may be used for the wrong reasons. While this works in theory, it can end up being a pain in the butt. Sometimes you’ll have to log in to confirm the address, or maybe you’ll miss an important update to shipping information.
Regardless of whether you make a junk email account or not, you should always be careful who you give out your email address to. Make sure the company or website is legit, and read the fine print when entering your email address to see how they plan to use that information in the future.
Delete, Delete, Delete
Simply deleting unwanted emails is the most obvious and straightforward method to clearing your inbox. However, sometimes these emails can get totally out of hand, or you can fall behind. Imagine logging in after a relaxing week-long holiday to find hundreds of unread emails! Sure, you can get to work and start deleting, but this is such a waste of our valuable time.
Not to mention, when you start trying to mass-delete like this, it’s quite likely that you may accidentally delete an important email. When a majority of the emails in your inbox are junk, it’s easy for a critical work email to get lost in the mix.
An Easy Solution That Does All In One
If you’ve gotten this far and you’re thinking that doing all of these steps sounds like a full-time job as well, we don’t blame you. That’s a lot of steps, and each time we block or unsubscribe one, somehow, a new junk sender finds their way to our inbox. Luckily, there’s an easier way.
InMoat will help you take back control over your email inbox and maybe even work your way back down to zero unread emails — a huge feat for those who have seen that red notification climb to astrological numbers!
By signing up to InMoat for Gmail or Outlook, you can stop wasting time sifting through the junk mail in search of the important ones buried by the garbage. You can decide what trusted contacts you prioritize, what unsolicited emails may actually be important to you, and which aren’t worth your time and should be hidden away. It’s basically like your own little virtual assistant taking care of you every day!
If you want to save yourself time and master your inbox once and for all, try InMoat for free today!
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