Thanks to Unroll.me, I No Longer Hate Email Newsletters

I used to find myself subscribing to email newsletters and setting up filters to funnel them into a folder (so they didn't hit my actual inbox) that I then forgot/avoided/never checked.

Then I went through a spurt where I would unsubscribe. It got to be just. too. much.

And then an author friend of mine emailed me. "Did I offend you?" she wrote.

"No, I was just trying to clean up inbox," I replied.

"Oh."

So I resubscribed.

And found myself--with that newsletter and many others--deleting them unread and promising myself I would never sign up for another one. Ever. At all.

And then, without fail, there would be a giveaway or an opportunity or, by gum, SOMETHING USEFUL, and it involves an email newsletter.

And I signed up.

Rinse and repeat. Sometimes more than once a day.

As I look back, I think managing all this (though "managing" is a strong word for the haphazard and mostly angry approach I had) took me a lot of brainpower. Maybe just minutes a day, but...baaaad minutes a day.

Now I smile about email newsletters. I don't so much hesitate to sign up for them. They don't suck my brainpower or my daily dose of contentment from my inbox, they don't make me angry or frustrated, and I'm not missing content in them.

Meet Unroll.me.

It's a service that goes through you inbox and does two things:

1. Moves all the subscriptions to a folder and marks them read (yes, two things in one step: isn't that great?)

and

2. Compiles a "Rollup" for you and sends it to you once a day, with small images of each newsletter. You can click on these images to "open" them, but if you're like me, you'll only click on, max, one a day (if any).

From who-knows-how-many minutes to 5 minutes a day.

Here, they can tell you better than I can:

Video link

I consider myself pretty good at email. (Don't judge.) And now, thanks to Unroll.me (which I've been using for about six months), I can not only subscribe, but enjoy newsletters.

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