How to harness the power of email filters

It’s easy to have an out-of-control email inbox. Your inbox may be cluttered with phishing scams, promotional and marketing emails, and updates from your social media accounts. The daily influx of new emails can bury the important emails you want to keep your eyes on. Using email filters can help you organize your inbox and quickly locate the emails you deem most important.

What are email filters?

Email filters are organizational tools built into your digital inbox. Some email providers preset filters for you to use. However, there are email service providers, like Outlook, that give you the power of setting your own rules and allow you to customize your email filters. Some filters you may want to use are for spam messages, marketing emails, social media alerts, business-related messages, and calendar events.

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Benefits of applying filters to your inbox

Email filters can help you organize your busy inbox. You can use filters to categorize existing emails and automatically place incoming messages into those same categories. Some email service providers allow you to color code messages so that you can visually locate emails by category or importance. Other benefits of using email filters include:

Added inbox protection from spam messages and other unwanted emails
Grouping messages together from email lists you forget you subscribed to
Quick searching for specific messages you’re hoping to find

How to get the most out of using email filters

Email filters aren’t only great for cybersecurity reasons. There are other ways you can maximize the use of email filters so that you can send and receive emails with ease.

Filter by specific email addresses

Just like you can set up groups of specific people on your social media accounts and favorite contacts in your cell phone’s contact list, you can curate a list of favorite senders in your inbox. Email filters allow you to categorize and save messages from specific email addresses. You won’t miss any more of the cute, attached photos that your loved ones send you if you put all their correspondences in one folder. Using email filters can help you do that.

“However, email filters can help you quickly locate those emails and mass delete them to give your inbox some storage space.”

Quickly delete your oldest, least important emails

Maybe you’re tired of receiving hundreds of emails about the same topic? It can take a lot of time to delete all those emails one by one. However, email filters can help you quickly locate those emails and mass delete them to give your inbox some storage space. You can search your inbox for specific words or phrases to find the relevant messages without having to open each message. Once you pull all the emails with the words you searched, you can select them all to delete them or move them to their own folder.

Easily locate the unwanted marketing messages

If your email service provider doesn’t automatically categorize promotion emails, you can do so on your own. By searching relevant keywords, like sale, unsubscribe, or deal, you may find a ton of promotional messages you subscribed to and forgot about. These marketing tactics can take up a great deal of your inbox and make it harder for you to locate personal emails. Email filters can help you pull the promotional messages so that you can unsubscribe from them, delete them, or move them to a specific folder.

Favorite event details sent via email

Receiving invitations by mail, text messages, and in your email can make it difficult to manage your busy schedule. Stay on top of all your RSVPs by using the calendar tool that’s attached to your email service if the provider offers it. You can use email filters to create an “Events” category that places all your invites into one folder and import the dates and times to your attached calendar.

Once you’ve harnessed the power of using email filters, you’ll noticed how much easier it is to use your email inbox. You’ll be able to save your important emails while clearing out all the fluff from your main inbox. You won’t have to worry about spending hours finding an email that was sent months ago because you’ll know what folder it’s placed in. Using email filters is a quick and easy way to take control of your digital messaging again.