How to Get Rid of Unwanted Emails

Your email is full of all sorts of content including both important emails such as calendar invites, email threads, and documents to unimportant and even unwanted emails such as newsletters, SPAM, and store promos.

In this article, we will detail how you can get rid of a lot of the unwanted emails that are cluttering your inbox that not only distract you from more important things but waste your time when it matters.

Unsubscribe from Unwanted Emails

One of the easiest ways to remove unwanted emails from a specific sender in your inbox is to unsubscribe from them. This is pretty straightforward as most senders should include an unsubscribe mechanism in the footer of their email. Having an unsubscribe mechanism is a legal requirement for anti-SPAM laws in most jurisdictions including the United States CAN-SPAM, California’s CCPA, Canada’s CASL, and the EU’s GDPR legislation.

If you receive a lot of emails that you wish to unsubscribe from, then manually clicking into each email, finding unsubscribe, and following the actions required to remove yourself from their email list may take a while. Fortunately, there are a handful of tools to make unsubscribing from unwanted emails both quick and painless.

Gmail’s Unsubscribe Tool

If you’re a Gmail user then you’re in luck. Gmail on Desktop makes it easy to unsubscribe from an email list if it can detect a working unsubscribe link in the email. Once you’re viewing an email in Gmail on a Desktop computer, simply click the unsubscribe call to action next to the Sender’s email address at the top and google will redirect you to the webpage where you update your email preferences.

Mass Unsubscribe with Third-Party Tools

If unsubscribing from emails one at a time via their email footer or Gmail’s unsubscribe button isn’t getting the job done, then consider using a third-party tool to help you unsubscribe from many emails lists in a few clicks.

Unroll.me

If you want to quickly unsubscribe from a handful of email lists, then Unroll.me is a good option that has been used by thousands of people for free for many years. Simply log in to Unroll.me to see email lists that you are subscribed to and click unsubscribe to remove yourself from any email lists. Unroll.me will take care of the unsubscribing and send any emails to your trash bin that may sneak their way past your email preferences.

It is important to note that since being acquired by Rakuten, Unroll.me has been kept as a free service as it does use your data to sell to advertisers and for market research purposes.

Cleanfox

Similar to Unroll.me, Cleanfox is a subscription management service that scans your inbox so you can review all of your subscriptions. Rather than list out all of your subscriptions, Cleanfox produces a card for each subscription for you to automatically delete all current and future emails from a sender, delete all future emails, or keep them in your inbox. The cards also provide you with some insights into how many emails you’ve received from the sender as well as what percentage of them you’ve opened. 

The tinder-esque swiping experience for managing your subscriptions is a great way to sort through your inbox to clear a lot of unwanted emails. The only downside is that if you have a lot of subscriptions, then clearing your inbox with Cleanfox may take a while.

It is also important to note that Cleanfox is owned by Foxintelligence who uses your anonymized data for market research purposes. 

Use a Throwaway Email Address

Sometimes you may want to download a report, test out a new tool, or trial a new platform but you cannot get access unless you give up your email address. Rather than provide, and grant their marketing teams access to, your primary email address, use a throwaway email address instead.

A throwaway email address is an email address that you are willing to throw away because it doesn’t hold any value or vital information to you. Using an email address other than your primary email address can come in handy when you’re looking to reduce the number of unwanted emails your receiving from products, platforms, or services, that require an email address to register.

Consider signing up for a new Gmail or Outlook email account to house all of your newsletters, store promos, and move. Using one can reduce the number of unwanted emails reaching your primary email so you can be more organized.

Manually Filter Out Unwanted Emails

If you know the types of emails that are cluttering your inbox, you may want to consider manually creating filters or rules that can automatically archive or mark any emails as read as they are received. With some work and ongoing maintenance, you can set up your Gmail or Outlook inbox to automatically remove unwanted emails.

We have previously detailed how you can set up email filters in Gmail to automatically filter out unwanted emails as well as how to set up rules in Outlook to automatically filter out unwanted emails.

Automatically Filter Unwanted Emails with InMoat

If you prefer to keep a lot of your subscriptions but want to prioritize and maintain focus on important emails then InMoat is the perfect solution for your inbox. With InMoat you can select the types of emails that are important to you and they will be prioritized in your inbox. All other unwanted emails such as newsletters, online store promos, and unsolicited sales emails will be tucked away in a new folder to be reviewed when it’s convenient for you. 

With InMoat you don’t have to worry about creating confusing email filters or continually updating your subscription list. InMoat automatically focuses on what is important to your workflow so you can stay productive and organized.

You can try InMoat for free for 30 days to see how your inbox can get organized by removing unwanted emails.

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