Recognising Inbox Insanity
I was checking out the free traffic booster and backlink software called Comment Kahuna today and noticed this message on their opt-in page:
Why must you opt-in? We have several free upgrades planned soon. You will be notified about them via email. We respect your privacy and inbox sanity. You will not be hammered with a million emails or promotions. We promise.
If you’re on multiple mailing lists, and don’t manage your inbox — you very well might find yourself suffering from inbox insanity.
I recently heard an internet marketer explain how they use a different email address for EVERY list they’re on (more than 500). Personally, I don’t have the time or inclination to track my incoming traffic that ruthlessly.
Instead, I use Google mail to manage my lists. Google’s labels and filters do a great job of sorting out the mail, and also filters can be setup to ensure messages never make it into the spam box (when some marketers fail to test if the words they use will trigger spam filters).
I leave it up to Google’s experts to identify and track spam.
And I happily accept Google’s offer of more than 7Gb of free space in exchange for some ads down the right hand side (no, I don’t use a Firefox script to hide the ads — as a marketer and copywriter, I enjoy looking at Google ads to see what gets my attention).
I think the “inbox sanity” message will resonate with a lot of people. They feel overwhelmed at times, especially around product launches or event countdowns where several of the people they get mail from are all promoting the same thing.
I don’t condemn frequent emails — actually it frustrates me to see people with very powerful lists under-utilise its potential. For example, I’m on one huge list (worldwide I would guess the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands or millions) — yet I get email from that source only a few times per year.
But back to the example above.
In this case, I think it’s a great example of keeping your antenna tuned in to the ongoing feelings of the marketplace. It’s just like watching the news or reading all of the regular magazines — if you don’t know what’s going on, you won’t know what your market is thinking!
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4 Responses to “Recognising Inbox Insanity”
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Good info about Gmail and where the marketplace is regarding intake. It’s quite easy with Outlook to set up folders for each list – and well worth it.
Great blog, Dean!
Kevin Rogers
Thanks Kevin!
PS: Enjoyed your January Jones post on CWB and your blog too!
The biggest mistake people make with Gmail is… not using the freaking “Archive” button!
Very easy way to sort out your mail and remove e-mail messages once you’ve dealt with them. I archive customer support issues, so I can search for them later, and usually delete promo e-mails after reading of course. Just like you I love ads to see what gets my attention.
Great point Robert! I *love* the Archive button … I just had a peek now, and I have 19,999 message in my “All Mail” — yet I’m still only using 6% of the space Google gives me.
67 labels keeps everything sorted. Even things like my automatic WordPress weekly backups get sent to Gmail, (filtered so they’re never seen in my Inbox, but easily available if I need them).
Compared to desktop based options like Outlook, Thunderbird and Eudora, it’s great too that I can be at any web-connected computer or device and have instant access to all of these messages.