Sometimes keeping up with my email feels impossible. I subscribe to lots of email newsletters, I follow lots of blogs and news sites, and I want to keep up with family and friends. Because of this, my email inbox tends to overflow each day. Yes, I could unsubscribe to some stuff but I’m a girl who likes to be in the know! Facebook notifications (interesting…). Fall sale at Anthropologie (ooooh…). LSU Alumni newsletter (Geaux Tigers!). However, how much of that can I really read through each day? And do I need to hear the latest from ZipCar right this second? When time is scarce, I need a way to streamline my inbox reading. There are lots of strategies to attack and organize your inbox, but recently I’ve started using Unroll.me to help keep my inbox cleaner. Unroll.me let’s you easily unsubscribe from email lists with one click. Then it “rolls up” all of your email subscriptions into one summary email . It’s a pretty nifty (and free) service that makes my inbox cleaner and let’s me browse certain types of emails when I’m ready for them.
HOW I USE IT
UNSUBSCRIBE. When I signed up for Unroll.me (steps below), it scanned all of my email and created a master list of everything I was currently subscribed to. The first step is to unsubscribe! Over time we end up on random mailing lists. Yes, I could read the fine print at the bottom of individual emails and unsubscribe one at a time. But Unroll.me gathers all of this info for me. I can go down the list and, with one click, unsubscribe from each list that I no longer want to be on.
STREAMLINE. Once I eliminated the unnecessary email subscriptions, I could focus on the list of email subscriptions I wanted. Unroll.me creates a “roll-up”, a digest email that collects all of my email subscriptions into one. I no longer receive all of the individual emails in my inbox. Instead, I receive one email daily that allows me to skim over everything and click through to the emails that I want to read. If something is important (for example, I want my NOLA.com headlines to still come to my inbox each morning) I can opt it out of the roll-up and it will still go to my inbox directly.
CATEGORIZE. I can view all of my email subscriptions by category. Unroll.me automatically categorizes them (ex: travel, shopping, deals & rewards, social) but I can also categorize them myself. This is useful when, for example, I want to see all of my shopping emails (what are the latest sales that are running?). Instead of getting bombarded daily with offers from my favorite stores, I can browse through recent shopping emails when I’m ready to shop. It’s also interesting to see how many emails you get in each category (who knew I was subscribed to so many travel sites? Time to go back a step and unsubscribe…).
Right now Unroll.me only works with Gmail or Google Apps but Yahoo and AOL functionality is in the works.
WHY I LOVE IT
- Easy – go to the site, sign into your email account, and within a couple minutes, everything is scanned and ready for you to organize!
- Clean – the daily roll-up email and the site itself is easy to navigate and has a great design
- Automatic – as you join newsletters, it automatically adds them to your roll-up (and lists them for you in case you want to unsubscribe or direct it to the inbox)
- Data – I love that you can see all of your email subscriptions by category. Fellow data nerds will appreciate.
- Less inbox clutter! Most importantly, it drastically cuts down the number of emails in my inbox each day. Important email still come to my inbox, irrelevant emails are easily eliminated, and the digest email gives me an easy glance at all of my subscriptions together so I can choose what’s important to me that day.
HOW TO GET STARTED
- Visit Unroll.me
- Go the “Get Started” box on the top right and select your current email provider: “Gmail / Google Apps” or “Other”
- Unroll.me then asks for access to your email so it can scan and organizeseverything. While you are granting access to your email, Unroll.me uses OpenID so you’re not handing over your password and you can delete your account and all of the associated data at any time.
- Once their scan is complete, you can to the “Edit view” to review and unsubscribe to any newsletters or lists you no longer want to receive.
- Then choose what time of day you’d like to receive your roll-up. This will contain all of your remaining subscriptions.
- Once you have it set up, you’ll receive your daily roll-up! You can click through to view the individual emails. You can also go to Unroll.me to edit or view your subscriptions.
MORE INFO
- Video: How It Works
- Advanced: If you really want to analyze your email activity and you’re a Gmail user, check out Google’s Account Activity report. Every month is summarizes stats about your email including sent / received volume, who you send the most email to, who you receive the most from.