Gmail aliases, filters and labels

We all have subscriptions to various online newsletters for one reason or another. Either you volunteered your information, or you were tricked by aggressive pop-ups asking you to subscribe. I would never do that to you. I want to show you how you can control the traffic of various online newsletters to your Gmail inbox so that you only see the emails you want to see.

Email aliases in Gmail

Did you know that if you write your email username, add a plus sign (+), any random text and then “@gmail.com”, the emails will still come to your Gmail inbox? For example, my email is shemblogs@gmail.com, but if you email shemblogs+donotdisturb@gmail.com, I will still receive your bothersome email. The plus sign (+) creates an alias of the original email address. This is cool, but why should you care?

Imagine you want all the newsletters you follow to go to a specific place in your inbox so you can find them easily. The easy way is to use an alias—I used “donotdisturb” earlier but you should use something more useful such as “newsletters”—then when subscribing to the newsletter on a site, enter yourusername+newsletters@gmail.com.

Create a filter and label

After subscribing using the alias, open your Gmail desktop app. Click in the right corner of the search bar at the top, and in the “To” slot, enter your alias: yourusername+newsletters@gmail.com then click “Create Filter“. Thereafter, choose how you want the emails handled. I usually have them marked as read, archived, applied to matching conversations, applied to a new label called “Newsletters” and then I click Create filter. What we are doing here is telling Gmail how to handle every email sent to yourusername+newsletters@gmail.com. The newly created label where the newsletters will be stored will appear in the left side panel below Drafts.

Newsletters label visible below Drafts

If you’re thinking: “well, Shem, this is great, but I already receive the newsletters, so how can I filter them?”You can filter the newsletters in 3 ways:

1. Unsubscribe then resubscribe with the alias. This will work going forward but the new label will not capture past newsletters
2. Open a past email of the desired newsletter via the search bar, copy the whole email that sends the newsletter (or just the domain such as @freethings.com) and place it in the “From” slot and create a filter as we did above. To ensure all future and past newsletters are captured, click “Also apply filters to X matching conversations”
3. While a past email from the desired newsletter is open, in the top right corner of the email window, click the 3 dots and select “Filter messages like this”. The Create Filter window will open and you can repeat the steps in point 2.

Option 3 illustration

Pro tip 💡: If you want to radically unsubscribe from ALL newsletters and promotional email campaigns (you probably don’t want to be this hasty), enter “unsubscribe” in the “Has the words” slot in the Create Filter window. All promotional emails and newsletters have the word “Unsubscribe”. It’s a quick fix, but you could block your blessings. Be careful.

Screen annoying work emails

[Read this part in a quiet whisper]

Sometimes you receive work emails and they stress you out but you can’t unsubscribe from them because they might be relevant at some point. For example, if you receive a barrage of work emails from HR or admin, you may want to create a filter and label to catch all those emails and store them somewhere. To create the filter, repeat the process above but place the HR/admin email (admin@work.com) in the “From” slot, then place the emails under a label called “Admin”. This way when you get a passive-aggressive email asking if you saw that email, you can quickly click the Admin label to view all the emails.

Conclusion

The treatment of newsletters and select emails is just one application of filters and labels. Even though Gmail’s sophisticated search algorithms make it easy to find any email by just typing keywords in the search bar, filters and labels are the best way to reduce the number of email alerts you receive, and organize your inbox. Can you think of other ways you can use filters and labels?

Have a great week and please do not filter and discard emails from me. Instead, filter and create a label called “The Lord’s work” for all my emails 😉.