Manage Your Email.  Manage Your Life

If there is anyone that knows about email overload and online communication fatigue, it’s me.  I average 600 emails a day.  Some of these are email newsletters, subscriptions services, and aggregated content that helps keep me in the know.  A large number of messages are from blog readers, clients, and just general email conversation.  The remaining are PR pitches and announcements from products and services in my space.  Many of these emails and PR pitches have no relevance to what I do whatsoever.  To say, I’m overloaded is an understatement, and up until recently, I’ve been managing my email and work calendar by myself knowing the messages that matter to me most from friends, readers, and clients are getting lost in the cracks.

I spend ridiculous amounts of time trying to manage my email both for work and life.  Instead of reading the important emails I get sidetracked by lame PR pitches asking me to share their latest video or tweet about their newest mobile gambling app.  Today’s lame email pitch comes from Mike’s Hard Lemonade and their Bear in a Bikini promotion.  Personally, they are pitching me totally wrong.  I’m not some bikini clad co-ed.  I’m a conference hopping business professional.  I’m also married with children and my days of belly shots are in my rear view.  From the looks of the video, the winners of their promotion are way, way far gone too.  I’m sure that this couple are not the type of sexy, hot customer they were expecting.

Bad PR Pitches via Email

Personally, I don’t see the relevance between HR, Recruiting and the world of work unless you’re talking about conferences parties for spiked lemonade.  This was one lame and bad PR pitch sent by email.   Why the hell I even got pitched this?  It’s not my drink of choice as my personal fitness trainer has me sticking to clear liquor for my cocktails, and lemonade does not make the list.  I needed a way to help filter and manage some of these email messages, as it’s becoming increasingly a challenge.  Enter Unroll.me.

Still in beta, Unroll.me works with gmail email addresses allowing you to receive a daily rollup of email subscriptions directly to your email address.  You can see to the right, today’s rollup has 98 messages for me.  To create your rollup, you log into unroll.me using your gmail account.  It analyzes the emails that are subscription based that you receive.  From here you can select categories to lump different subscriptions together as well as the time and frequency when you would like to receive the rollup message.

Enter the Zero Inbox

I’m a fan of getting everything I need in the mornings even if I don’t get to it right away.  Unroll.me sends me my subscriptions first thing so I can begin the day being informed on industry trends, various blogs, and newsletters that I use in my research, work with clients, and writing inspiration.  I’m one step closer to inbox zero that email utopia I hear so much about but never, ever reach.

One of the things I’d like to see in future upgrades of the tool, is the ability to create your own categories.  You can see the current categories offered to the left.  These are severely limited and very general at the moment.  I’d love to be able to break down my subscriptions by Leadership, Marketing, Human Resources, Technology and Recruiting topics making the storage and search process even easier.  I can’t complain too much as Unroll.me is absolutely free which is very different from other email organization and management services I’ve seen.  It also makes my email inbox less cluttered and complex so I don’t lose sight of those really important messages.

Visit Unroll.me to learn more about their free email management service.  You can view more HR technology and other product services reviews here or learn how you can get your product reviewed on Blogging4Jobs.