3 Easy Steps to Reducing SPAM

How much time do you spend going through emails? If you’re like me — you get a lot! In fact, 3/4 of my emails are spam. And it becomes annoying that I waste time on deleting them over and over again.

I’ve had enough! I want to save time.

So a week ago I decided I was going to reduce my email. And it worked.

Here’s what I learned. You 1st have to commit to:

• Determine what communication you want. I decided that I no longer wanted to get commercial emails unless they help me business-wise. And I only want to get informative, interesting emails. If I don’t regularly read their emails, I don’t want them. I wanted to be brutal.
• Become dedicated. Intensely dedicated. It’ll take more time now to save time later. But if you don’t actively want to do it, you’ll fail.
• Create a potential spam address. Most email providers allow you to create another email account (usually free). I created a “special” email that I use to sign up for things that I suspect will produce spam in the future. At a certain time in the future, I’ll just dump the email address and not miss anything (and it’ll make the process easier in the future).

Then I went through this 3 step process.

1. Be diligent with opt-outs. At the bottom of most spam, there’s an “unsubscribe” button. CANSPAM laws require this now. But spammers love to try to hide it. Be diligent. Find the link and follow the directions once you go to their web page.
2. Bounce emails that don’t contain opt-out instructions. Most email clients allow you to “bounce” an email. Look under the “message” menu. This sends the email back to the sender as though the email doesn’t work. This often gets your email removed from the spammer’s list. They don’t like having emails bounced.
3. Manage the email accounts you can. If you like an email, look at the bottom to see if you have options for when you receive their email, how frequently, and what topics/subject is available. Reduce, reduce, reduce!

Beware though: Monitor your spam folder throughout this process. Make sure good emails don’t get caught there. And it’s always wise to bounce anything in the spam folder. If it’s spam.

I’ve reduced my emails by 80% — I love it! Now I need to figure out what I’m going to do with all my time. Maybe even tackle my long to-do list. Or improve our website.