We’re doing a little spring cleaning on our email inbox, and yesterday we had an email from Microsoft about a service they offer called Clutter. It alerted us that there were 72 email messages we were likely to ignore, and this highly specific number caught our attention.
Before we get started, Clutter is a service specific to Microsoft Outlook users. If you don’t use Outlook, hang on—we have something else for you.
Clutter looks at your past email-reading behavior, and determines what messages you are likely to ignore. It moves those messages to a folder in your inbox called Clutter Items. You can see the items in that folder regardless of whether you are using Outlook for web, Outlook for desktop, or Outlook on your mobile device.
This is different from junk mail filtering. Junk mail is filtered out into the junk filter first, based on the characteristics of the message itself. (For example, if it contains references to weight-loss pills, or Dr. Oz, or meeting singles.) Clutter takes effect after junk mail filtering, sorting the messages that you don’t open or don’t respond to, based on your own past behavior. It gets better at predicting your needs based on how you interact with it. You can mark items as “clutter” or “not clutter” to help it improve, just as you do with spam messages.
To understand what messages you perceive as clutter, this service looks at:
- The sender
- Whether you’ve participated in the conversation
- If you’re the only recipient
- The importance level
Clutter says it will never filter out messages that are from you or from anyone in your management chain (both your managers and your direct reports). If you’re sold on this idea, click here to learn how to set up Clutter (or call us!).
If You’re Using Something Other Than Outlook
If you’re not, you might try a service called Unroll.me. It currently supports Outlook.com (including Hotmail, MSN, & Windows Live), Gmail, Google Apps, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, and iCloud. Unroll.me works by identifying your subscription messages and listing them for you. You can choose to unsubscribe right there, if you like!
For the messages you want to keep receiving, Unroll.me compiles them into a SINGLE daily digest called the Rollup. One email, once a day; you can choose if you want to receive your digest in the morning, the afternoon, or at night. All of your filters and labels will still work normally. If you want to check a subscription individually, all emails in your Rollup can also be found inside your email client, in a folder called “Unroll.Me.”
If you change your mind about a particular email subscription and want to receive it in your inbox, you click “Stop Rolling Up” by that email subscription on the ‘Edit Subscriptions’ page.
If you’re concerned about how Unroll.me accesses your inbox, it uses OAuth for the services that support it. For the others, they securely encrypt your password. To connect to your account, they use IMAP for all services.
If you need help with managing your email, we’re here to help. Drop us a line and let us help you get back to business.
