Purging My Way to Freedom From Email Clutter

After the last, big, “mega-​​product launch,” and a bar­rage of me-​​too mar­ket­ing emails from the usual sus­pects, I’ve decided enough is enough. And it’s about time.

I’ve done some­thing I should have done a long time ago.

And I feel liberated.

I rec­om­mend you do the same.

That is, I unsub­scribed from 90% of the newslet­ters I was receiv­ing. I deleted fear­lessly. Unsub­scribed relent­lessly. Purged ruth­lessly. With­out blink­ing or look­ing back.

If you think it’s not a lot, let me give you a back­story. When I was the edi­tor of The Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Chron­i­cles newslet­ter over a decade ago (which has since been acquired by the late Corey Rudl), I sub­scribed to a lot of email newsletters.

Yes, lots. Like over-​​a-​​thousand lots.

I’m a speed-​​reader, so get­ting that many emails was never a big chal­lenge. And before you con­clude I was an email junkie, let me give you a few rea­sons in my defense.

For one, I wanted to be up on things. I wanted to stay abreast of new changes, new mar­ket­ing strate­gies, new soft­ware tools, and so on. (I still do.)

Sec­ond, it gave me a lot of fod­der while writ­ing edi­to­ri­als for the then pop­u­lar newslet­ter. I’m proud to have been instru­men­tal in help­ing them grow their list from 45,000 to 160,000 sub­scribers, and remem­ber that 160,000 back in ’98 was quite a feat!

And third, these emails served me well as they were also used for research pur­poses. As an up-​​and-​​coming copy­writer writ­ing a lot for the Inter­net mar­ket­ing crowd at the time, I wanted to see what oth­ers were say­ing, pro­mot­ing, doing, email­ing, and writing.

But this week­end, after last week’s ubiq­ui­tous mega-​​launch pro­mo­tional emails started clut­ter­ing up my inbox, it became the prover­bial straw that broke this camel’s back.

It all started when, dur­ing the past week­end, I hap­pened to do some spring clean­ing around the house. I cleaned out the garage, went through my closet, and dumped a lot of things I no longer wear, need, or use. (Sal­va­tion Army, here I come!)

Once I was done, how­ever, and being in the purg­ing mood, I decided to keep purg­ing. So I started doing the same with my email, let alone my busi­ness and my mind.

I’ve purged my inbox and unsub­scribed from hun­dreds of email lists.

Not 10 or 20, but hundreds!

Some had sin­gle lists. But oth­ers had quite a bit more. Most mar­keters have on aver­age three or more autore­spon­ders — espe­cially if I was listed as an affil­i­ate. In fact, with one mar­keter I was sub­scribed to 22 lists! I mean, twenty-​​bloody-​​two!

So I had to check, check, check… scroll down… and click “unsub­scribe.” Then I’d rinse and repeat. Over and over again. For close to three hours.

Feel­ing lib­er­ated is an understatement.

Nor­mally, I get about 1,000 emails a day (i.e., per­sonal emails or newslet­ters, as we do have staff and mul­ti­ple helpdesks to han­dle all of our busi­ness and sup­port emails).

This morn­ing, I woke up to nine. Yup, just nine emails.

Granted, it’s a hol­i­day week­end, so I might see 15–25 tomor­row. Per­haps a bit more. But it’s a far cry from the tra­di­tional 200–500 I get first thing in the morning.

(Now, I’m anx­ious to see who really removed me, and if I was suc­cess­ful. It’s going to be inter­est­ing to see who keeps email­ing me or who has ignored my unsub­scribe request.)

By the way, I did this using my mobile phone, since my wife and I pledged to stay away from our com­put­ers dur­ing week­ends. We both take week­ends off, and our pro­duc­tiv­ity has increased ten­fold, if not more, because of it. (This purge will boost it more, I’m sure.)

I highly rec­om­mend you do the same. Tak­ing week­ends off, or at least one day, will be one of the best pro­duc­tiv­ity boost­ers you will give your­self and your business.

Nev­er­the­less, a major rea­son for the purge was the con­tin­u­ously decreas­ing qual­ity in infor­ma­tion, and the dis­pro­por­tion­ate increase in pro­mo­tional or cloned messages.

When I first sub­scribed to many of these email lists, a good bunch of them were orig­i­nal, inspir­ing, news­wor­thy, and offered some great advice. And yes, many of them pro­moted — and some were for really cool prod­ucts, which I no doubt bought.

(And boy, did I buy quite a bunch of them, too!)

Lately, how­ever, too many emails con­tain the same, regur­gi­tated platitudes.

Most are push­ing the same mega-​​launch, or some less-​​than-​​original prod­uct that’s been recy­cled over 20 times, with­out being ade­quately com­pen­sated with emails con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion, edu­ca­tion, or unique con­tent. Even if it’s just news or commentary!

Now, you might say it’s because of blog­ging. But keep in mind, many email lists, which used to be con­sis­tently content-​​rich, have switched gears over time to become more bla­tantly pro­mo­tional — par­tic­u­larly with the lat­est, flavor-​​of-​​the-​​week mega-​​launch.

The scales have tipped quite dra­mat­i­cally in the last decade.

I’m a diehard cap­i­tal­ist, and I do believe in pro­mot­ing to your lists. I always look out for some great offers I might be inter­ested in. But I do so, pro­vided there’s a good mix of con­tent and pro­mo­tions to bal­ance things out.

Bal­ance over­all, not just per indi­vid­ual marketer.

I don’t mind if it’s 50–50. Even 60–40 or 70–30. If my inbox was filled with more pro­mo­tions than con­tent, that’s fine. The prob­lem is, it’s now 95% pro­mo­tions and 5% content.

It’s a bar­rage of pitch-​​pushing, me-​​too mad­ness gone awry. Every­body seems to pro­mote the lat­est and great­est tac­tic or system-​​gaming course…

… Like “How to Gain 26,754 Twit­ter Fol­low­ers in Just 72 hours!” or, “How This Back­door Google Strat­egy Cranked Up My Rank­ings Overnight And Pounded a Gazil­lion Dol­lars Into My Bank Account… With­out Lift­ing a Finger!”

I mean, seri­ously? You’re shoot­ing me, right? Ugh.

What ever hap­pened to solid, fresh, help­ful information?

Before you go think­ing I’m only try­ing to get infor­ma­tion for free, no, I’m not try­ing to get infor­ma­tion for free. My wife and I have a quarter-​​of-​​a-​​million dol­lar bud­get each year, to update our knowl­edge, skills, and tools, from which we spend with­out bat­ting an eye.

But I remem­ber the days when an email newslet­ter was exactly that: a NEWS-​​letter. Content-​​rich, per­haps with clas­si­fied ads inside, or with the occa­sional “solo email” thrown in from time to time. (Oh, those were the good ol’ days. Sigh.)

Instead, the Inter­net has become awash in use­less, platitude-​​filled, pitch-​​infested, repet­i­tive mes­sages that never teach any­thing, let alone say any­thing new.

(If I get another “bad news” email, I’m going to vomit.)

The sad part is, there are quite a few mar­keters out there for whom I have a great deal of respect, and whom I’ve been fol­low­ing for a very long time. For many years, in fact. They’re the last peo­ple I’d expect to turn to such tactics.

But alas, I’m astounded when out of the blue I get the same, tired, rehashed copy or prod­uct pitch from them. It not only irri­tates me, it also deeply dis­ap­points me. I often say to myself, nod­ding, “Oh no, [guru’s name], how could you?”

When I say there’s a gross lack of unique con­tent online these days, I don’t mean to imply that infor­ma­tion should always be brand-​​spanking new and totally original.

We always need basics. Fun­da­men­tals. Principles.

And we do need to revisit them from time to time.

(Right now, I think that need is more preva­lent than ever.)

We need them for two rea­sons: one, many new­bies are enter­ing the Inter­net mar­ket­ing space each and every day; and two, we need to stop work­ing on just mak­ing money and start focus­ing on build­ing busi­nesses instead.

Tac­tics make money, but strate­gies build busi­nesses. Money-​​making busi­nesses. Busi­nesses that cre­ate income and not just short-​​term cash infusions.

And all busi­nesses will always rely on strong fun­da­men­tals and core mar­ket­ing prin­ci­ples, even when you’ve con­vinced your­self that you don’t need them.

In fact, even though I think I’ve seen them all, I still love going back to the fun­da­men­tals and read­ing about mar­ket­ing basics. Why? Because, while I’ve heard them before, they are taught dif­fer­ently, by a dif­fer­ent per­son, with their own unique twist.

And I love learn­ing how dif­fer­ent peo­ple look at the same things I do.

Any­how, I’ve decided to cut out the excess clut­ter. Just like some peo­ple are pack­rats and keep every­thing for fear of throw­ing some­thing that they may one day need, nature abhors a vac­uum, even when it comes to email.

You can’t have more good stuff come into your life when you’re filled to the rim with the not-​​so-​​good. Sure, I might miss out on some­thing worth­while by remov­ing myself from so many lists. But I value my free­dom, and my san­ity, more.

I know that lib­er­at­ing and reclaim­ing my inbox will even­tu­ally open it up to more pro­duc­tive, fresh, help­ful, pos­i­tive, and dare I say it, orig­i­nal information.

Mind you, it’s not a com­plete purge. There are still a few I will stay sub­scribed to. I doubt they will ever lower their stan­dards — although I’ve been sur­prised in the past. But based on prior expe­ri­ence, I think they’re pretty safe.

One of them is cer­tainly Paul Myers’ Talk­Biz News. I love Paul’s stuff. I’ve been sub­scribed to Paul’s email newslet­ter for over a decade now, and it still deliv­ers highly use­ful con­tent, with the occa­sional inci­sive com­men­tary and kick in the pants.

(You couldn’t pry me away with a 10-​​foot crow­bar from Paul’s newslet­ter. It’s that good.)

Bot­tom line, it’s all about free­dom. Isn’t it?

Free­dom from clut­ter. Free­dom from bull. Free­dom from — to bor­row a title from a famous science-​​fiction movie — the attack of the clones.

I’d like to fin­ish with a quote I found on Twit­ter. It’s by Egbert Sukop, author of “How to Bet­ter Hate Your Job.” And it pretty much sums it all up. It goes like this…

“The divid­ing line between rich and poor: for the ‘poor,’ free­dom depends on money. For the ‘rich,’ money depends on freedom.”

About the Author

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