If you use gmail, you know that awhile ago, they separated their email box to automatically send all promotional email to one folder and all of your personal email to a personal folder (with your spam continuing to go to a spam box).
In today’s email from Seth Godin, he discusses a fix for all of the personal email that gmail incorrectly sorts to your promo folder.
He and his team tried to write some code that would fix the problem. Unsurprisingly, Google rejected the code and told him, “Gmail’s tabbed inbox experience puts emails where our users want them to be, based on user corrections. Users may further customize with filters, or disable tabs altogether.”
My question: Why would anyone have assumed this would work correctly in the first place?
I never tried or used gmail’s promo folder because I didn’t think it would work, and I didn’t want to leave it to them to determine what would go where.
But there’s another reason: I never give my gmail address to anyone who isn’t a personal connection. Instead, like many, I created a separate email account that I use for any purchases, transactions, or random inquiries where I know I might start getting a lot of unwanted email.
Using this method, I never miss personal email because it’s in the wrong folder. Everything in my transactional account is truly promotional (which, to me, is synonymous with “garbage”).
(I’m also very cautious about giving any of my email addresses to anyone because I don’t want promotional or useless email, in general.)
Instead of trying to fix the Google behemoth, why not just have two accounts with different purposes?
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