How To Unsubscribe From Pesky Marketing Emails

January 23, 2023
How To Unsubscribe From Pesky Marketing Emails

Find out when prices drop automatically and say goodbye to marketing newsletters clogging up your inbox.

I love flicking through a good marketing newsletter as much as the rest, and as a marketer, I know they produce great results for not much spending. But, as a shopaholic, I find myself being led down rabbit holes and not buying what I want and need because I'm spending money on stuff I just discovered. Sound familiar? Here’s how to unsubscribe from those marketing emails.

Most people get too many emails in general, and spending time managing daily emails is a time investment you should reserve for what's truly important.

Hide what you buy from Google so it's not all over your Facebook feed.

Ask yourself the following about the marketing material hitting your inbox:
  • Are the emails even relevant to you?
  • Are you receiving too many emails from a particular company than you wish?
  • Do the emails feel too sales'y, or do you enjoy the content?
  • Are the emails all the same, and you're tired of hearing the same message?
  • Are you already seeing the company all over your socials, doubling up when you get emails?
  • Do the emails focus on your needs, or is it just what the company wants you to do?
  • Do the emails help you make purchasing decisions?
  • Are you following the emails only to see if what you want goes on sale?

Depending on your answers, it might be time to unsubscribe from marketing emails. If the emails aren't serving you and are more annoying, go for it. If you answered yes to the last question about finding out about sales, we have a handy app that can take care of that for you.

So, you are checking marketing emails to see when the sales are on?

If you are after something in particular and don't necessarily want to know "what all" is on sale, then you can save that item's URL and be notified when the price on the page changes using Fetchie.

Use Fetchie to find out when sales are on so you can unsubscribe from marketing emails

Let's revisit the "too many marketing emails" for a minute.

If you recognise that marketing emails aren't serving you and want to purge some of them from your inbox, it sounds easy enough to unsubscribe, right? Yeah right! Why do marketers make it so difficult to do this?

Maybe you want to Keep your online shopping private and avoid retargeting

Ways to unsubscribe from unwanted marketing emails

Method-1 Manually

You can choose the manual method described above and individually "try" to unsubscribe, or you can employ some new tactics to help you. To do this, look at the footer of the email to find the unsubscribe link. In addition, you might have more steps to take. Some senders take you to a separate web page after clicking the link, where you must confirm that you want to unsubscribe before the process is complete.

By default, most major email providers do not provide a dedicated list of emails you are subscribed to. So, to find all the marketing emails, try searching your inbox for the word "unsubscribe" or "no-reply."

Search your inbox for "unsubscribe" or "do-not-reply"

Tip 1: Be vigilant about clicking on any link in an email if you suspect the sender is dodgy. It may say unsubscribe as a hyperlink and direct you to a page you'd rather not visit!

Tip 2: Learn how to deal with email in the first place with a method called 'zero inbox.'

Method-2 -Unsubscribe Tools

You should be successful using the manual method. Still, if you want more help (because you've had your email address for several years and the marketing emails have outpaced the time you have dedicated to delete them), then you can try a free or paid tool to help you.

1. Unroll.me - Bulk unsubscribe from annoying subscription emails. Available on the web or via a mobile app, Unroll.me checks your email and proactively identifies messages it thinks you won't like. Then provides a list of the senders with options on what you want to do. A feature I like is "Today's Rollup" It's a well-designed email where you can see the headline and subject line of the senders you put in the group, and if you feel like reading any of the emails, you can easily click on them.

This might satisfy the FOMO you feel when you unsubscribe from marketing emails. It then leaves only one email to delete instead of how many are in the group. This Rollup can be edited or deactivated at any time.

The catch: Unroll.me is free, but it does sell anonymised marketing data from users. Learn more about what companies do with this information.

Unroll.me

2. UnSubscriber by Polymail - Connect your email account and Polymail identifies all your subscriptions and helps you unsubscribe & clean your inbox with just one click.

What we love: Unlike other services, UnSubscriber will never sell your personal information to advertising and marketing companies.

The Catch: UnSubscriber is a paid service because they are not selling your data toother companies. The pricing needs to be more transparent on their website, and you'll need to take the free trial to get this information.

UnSubscriber by Polymail

3. Leave me alone - Leave Me Alone is a privacy-focused service that makes it easy to unsubscribe from spam emails. It works like many email management tools: It gives you an inbox explicitly built for clearing mail. Specifically, it presents you with emails you can unsubscribe from, such as newsletters, promotions, mailing lists, search alerts, etc. This includes emails that don't have obvious unsubscribe links.

Instead of an archive button, each email has a toggle next to it. Click the toggle, and Leave Me Alone tries to unsubscribe you. It does this without taking you to another webpage or making you fill out forms. It often, but not always, succeeds.

Leave Me Alone uses credits ($2.50 for 50) that you apply for unsubscribing; 1 unsubscribe = 1 credit. It supports Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, iCloud, AOL, and IMAP accounts. You can also connect them all. Users purchase packages of credits to fit the size of their inbox and only pay for what they unsubscribe from. New users start with some free credits so they can start unsubscribing immediately and get familiar.

The credit-based pricing means you can return more often and unsubscribe from a few marketing emails each time rather than trying to clear your entire inbox in one go!

Leave Me Alone

4. Clean email works on any device and with all email service providers like Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, and your company email account. Use it with any email app, such as Outlook, Apple Mail, Gmail App, and more.

Clean email helps you manage your mailbox overloaded with unread and unwanted emails more efficiently — while keeping your data safe and respecting your privacy. Clean email will send unsubscribe requests on your behalf and block mailing lists and senders who do not respect such requests (this allows you to unsubscribe from unwanted email lists that don't even have an Unsubscribe link. You can also manage your subscriptions more efficiently by choosing to Read Later, Pause, or Keep Newest for the best way to unsubscribe from marketing emails.

Why We love this: Clean Email is designed and built with your privacy and security in mind. Your data is stored encrypted and Clean Email will never share, give away, sell, analyse, "anonymise", or otherwise use your data. The algorithm only examines email headers that contain the subject line, sender and recipient information, dates, email size, and similar metadata. Clean email does not access the content of emails or attachments. Your mailbox access details are encrypted. They are unavailable to anyone at Clean Email and are only used to scan your mailbox and perform selected actions.

The Catch: This is a paid service and will cost you $52.97 AUD/year for one account or $88.27 AUD/year for up to 5 accounts.

Clean email

Method-3-Rules and Filters with your provider
1. If you use Gmail

Gmail helps us with this unsubscribe issue. Whenever a working unsubscribe link is found in the message, Gmail puts a link of its own on the top of the message, near the address of the sender's email. Sometimes it replaces the spam icon in the toolbar. And as we click on it, an even bigger unsubscribe button appears.

You can tap on the three-dot menu at the top of the screen on the mobile phone. If the sender offers an unsubscribe option, then "Unsubscribe" appears in the menu to unsubscribe from those marketing emails.

The Catch: After clicking, you confirm "Unsubscribe" and the emails will go straight to your junk folder. You're not unsubscribed in the sense that you opted out of their emails. You are redirecting them to a folder to empty.

Gmail

2. If you use iOS

The iOS 10 and later introduced a few tweaks. One such tweak is the ability for the Apple Mail app to identify emails from individuals and companies. Apple understood the shady practices of email marketers not adding unsubscribe buttons within emails and wanted to make unsubscribing easier for their customers.

With iOS 10 or later, a boldly written unsubscribe link appears at the top of the page when you receive a message from email campaigns.

To unsubscribe from marketing emails on iPhone or iPad using this method, follow the instructions below.

  1. Open any message from the desired newsletter or promotion in your mail app.
  2. At the top of the message, you will find "this message is from mailing list" and an unsubscribe button.
  3. Click Unsubscribe.
  4. You will get a pop-up asking you to confirm your choice. Proceed with the unsubscribe link to finalise the process.

From your phone: Use Apple's built-in email unsubscriber. You will find the unsubscribe button at the top of every message received from email campaigns. Click on it to stop receiving further messages from these senders.

The Catch: While the function itself works, email marketers with shady practices might keep sending you emails even after you unsubscribe. You will have to block the sender to get rid of such emails. But, the iOS Mail app is merely a portal. It accesses emails from other providers like Yahoo, Outlook, or Gmail. However, the access is one-way only. You must sign into your original email provider to completely block an email.

3. If you use Outlook

Like Apple Mail, you can unsubscribe from marketing emails fairly quickly by clicking on the link at the top of an email you've opened. This applies to both mobile and desktop Outlook versions. Click once again to confirm, and you're all set.

The Catch: Currently, the mobile Outlook email app doesn't have a block option. You'll need to use a desktop device to log into your Outlook account. Then, open an email from the sender you'd like to block, click the dotted icon menu and select "Block."

4. If you use Yahoo

Yahoo is a bit unique in the way it handles unsubscribing, as mobile and desktop methods are different. For the mobile Yahoo mail app, open an email and go to the dotted icon menu. From this menu, you'll have two options to select: unsubscribe or mark as spam.

The Catch: The Yahoo desktop mail version doesn't give you an unsubscribe option. You'll need to click either the spam icon or dotted icon with the block option — both at the top of an opened email.

Create filters

+ Most email providers

Step 1: Create a new folder

Step 2: Go to settings to set up a new Rule - click + Add a new rule

Step 3: Name the rule, add the conditions "Message body includes", and type unsubscribe. Add the action "Move to" and choose the new folder you created. Hit save, and you are done.

+ Gmail

In Gmail, it's slightly different terminology. You create a new "label" and use "filters" instead of rules. Labels are different from folders. If you delete a message, it will be erased from every label it's attached to and your entire inbox. You can manage your incoming mail using Gmail's filters to send email to a label, archive, delete, star, or automatically forward your mail.

Create a Label

Step 1: On the left, scroll down, then click More.

Step 2: Click Create new label.

Step 3: Name your label.

Step 4: Click Create.

Gmail

Create a Filter

What are Gmail filters? A Gmail filter is simply a set of rules applied to incoming emails. You can customise these rules as you see fit, making sure that certain types of emails end up somewhere other than your inbox.

  1. In the search box at the top, click Show search options.
  2. Enter your search criteria. If you want to check that your Search worked correctly, see what emails show up by clicking Search.
  3. At the bottom of the search window, click Create filter.
  4. Choose what you'd like the filter to do, use "Has the words" and type "unsubscribe", then choose "Create filter".

The next step is to apply that filter as emails arrive. This is where the magic happens. Now that you've specified specific types of emails to filter, you'll decide what Gmail should do with them.

Create filters in Gmail

There are several options available, and you can apply multiple options if they're compatible with each other:

  • Skip the Inbox (Archive it) will automatically archive incoming messages that match your filter criteria.
  • Mark as read will automatically mark those messages as read.
  • Star it will mark those messages with a star.
  • Apply the label will allow you to apply an existing or new label to these incoming messages, helping you easily categorise them.
  • Forward it lets you forward it to a specific email address.
  • Delete it automatically deletes these emails. Use this one cautiously.
  • Never send it to Spam whitelists emails that match these criteria.
  • Always mark it as important and Never mark it as important allow you to automatically add or remove an importance marker (the chevron-like symbol) from these messages.
  • Categorise as: allows you to choose a category like Primary, Social, Updates, Forums, or Promotions, where you can send incoming emails like this. To begin with, Google does an excellent job of detecting these types of emails, but an extra filter can help you out in fringe cases.
  • Also apply a filter to matching conversations. Ordinarily, filters will only apply to emails moving forward. This option allows you to properly mark or categorise emails in your inbox that currently match your criteria.

At this point, you should have everything you need to create filters and folders within your email accounts, and you know more about the software that helps you manage and clean up years of unaddressed email clutter , on top of being able to unsubscribe from marketing emails with ease.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out more posts on our blog.

Related Posts

Subscribe to Fetchie newsletter

Submit your email, and once a month we'll send you our best time-saving articles, videos and other resources.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.