It occurred to me the other day, not for the first time, that I get too much stupid e-mail. I'm not talking about spam, to which I concede defeat. Spam e-mail, like its meaty namesake, is eternal. No, I'm talking about "sanctioned" spam -- deals and offers and notifications I get because I somehow authorized them.
Because of this, my inbox was annoyingly cluttered, and since clearing it out seemed easier than organizing the many cluttered spaces in my house, I decided to launch an unsubscribe campaign. Instead of just frowning at and deleting (unread) those e-mails, I would find the tiny links at the bottom and painstakingly remove myself from the lists of designated recipients.
It took me three months. Here's a breakdown of how it went.
Day 1: Looking through the e-mails I received just this one day, there were eight that I would normally delete unread. Mostly they were from companies or online services I'd purchased from in the past. Apparently I somehow failed to uncheck the "yes, send me tons o' e-mails" box on a lot of these. Some were complete mysteries but had appeared regularly enough that I didn't think they were random spam.
Unsubscribing from all eight took me five minutes. Most were basic procedures -- click the link and be greeted with an "Are you SURE? We'll MISS you!" page, click confirm, done. Some were more complicated, requiring me to read through lists and uncheck boxes, enter my e-mail address, and so on. But still -- five minutes. I was encouraged.
Days 2-3: I got busy, and the prospect of unsubscribing from e-mails felt overwhelming. I skipped it.
Day 4: Now that I had three days' worth of unwanted e-mails to unshackle myself from, I really had to mentally buckle down for the enterprise. By that point, I had accumulated 15 messages that needed my unsubscribing attention. One of these was, maddeningly, a repeat from day one! My unsubscription didn't take!
This time, it took me closer to 15 minutes to get through them all, and the results were not completely satisfying. I managed to fairly easily unsub from all but two of the e-mails, through various methods. I will say that while it didn't hinder my unsubscribing process much, I don't like the ones that make you supply a reason for unsubbing. Let's not make things awkward, unwanted e-mailers, OK? A clean break is best.
But there were two puzzlers in the bunch. First, I went back to the unsub options for the retailer who I'd previously attempted to unsub from. Looking over their somewhat confusing form, all the options I could see were marked "Unsubscribed." So why was I still getting e-mail from them? I gave it another try, hitting submit on all my Unsubscribe preferences.
The other retailer made me log in to my account, then it told me I was not signed up for any e-mails from them. Uh, I beg to differ, since I get loads of e-mails from this online behemoth every week. Stumped, I left the site to try again some other time.
__Day 5: __No unsubscribable e-mails! Was this it? Had I reached the end?
Day 6: Nope. Another repeater. I told you on Friday, major TV network, that I didn't want any more of your e-mails! For shame! I unsubbed again.
Days 7-66: I admit it: I gave up. I got busy. I couldn't handle unsubbing for a while, so I went back to deleting unread.
__Day 67: __Back to business! Three unsubscriptions done!
Days 68-90: Only 15 unsubscribable e-mails in this time period! I had definitely made a dent. Annoyingly, a couple were repeats, and a couple were so inscrutable as to be functionally impossible to unsub from. For those, I gave up and just did a "block sender" in Outlook. By the end of these 90 days, I had made a serious impact on my incoming e-mail volume.
So, was it worth it? And more to the point, would it be worth it for you, fellow GeekMoms?
My verdict is yes. I still get the occasional straggler, but overall my inbox is a cleaner, more manageable place. And it honestly wouldn't have taken me anything like 90 days if I hadn't gotten lazy for a couple of months. But that's the bigger lesson I learned here -- there's really no reason to avoid the task. Thanks to CAN-SPAM laws, it's just not that hard to unsubscribe from e-mail clutter. It only takes a few minutes, and it made a difference to my e-mailing productivity.
