The Trouble with e-Mails

I was  prompted to write this after reading the excellent Matt Garrett’s blog the other week. 

He was writing about the problem of dealing with too many e-mails.  It turns out that we have a similar approach to the problem.  Here is what I do.

I only open the e-mails that I know I want to read straight away.  All the others are saved into a folder.  I only look at them again after a couple of weeks.  I know, what if I have missed anything important?  Well, I haven’t so far….

I will read anything from friends, PayPal, Amazon (especially the ‘Sold, Dispatch Now’ e-mails), and particular newsletters, like Jim Cockrum’s, straight away.  The rest tend to be e-mails from people wanting to sell me something of newsletters that looked good at the time I subscribed.

I go back to the folder when I have time.  If a newsletter is nothing but a thinly disguised sales letter then I unsubscribe.  If the e-mail includes something interesting it will still be relevant after 2 weeks.  The only things I miss because I have not opened them straight away are ‘time limited’ offers – although are still running 2 weeks after the closure date!  I have a dislike of time limited offers.  Most seem to be using a ploy to engender a sense of excitement about an otherwise rubbish offer.

How do you deal with a torrent of e-mail?

Phil