Overwhelmed by email marketing

You are not alone

You're BU because you literally subscribed to all of these email lists yourself. It is wild how many come out of the woodwork at this time of year, but you just have to unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe and whenever one gets through during the year UNSUBSCRIBE don't delete.

I had to do a big purge last year for this reason, and I hardly get any now. I use gmail.

Completely agree with you, it's really annoying. I've unsubscribed to emails from brands I wanted to stay in touch with but really didn't want daily emails from, and the ones who slide through cos of multiple addresses have actually made me change some of my buying habits just so I don't encourage them. I'm starting to think marketing people have totally lost the plot - surely this tactic loses more customers than it gains!

There are services which put all your emails into one big digest which you receive daily. I use Mailbrew and I can't function without it. It also allows you to unsubscribe in bulk and alerts you if there are companies whose emails you never open so that you can unsubscribe from them too.

Although I want no marketing emails from brands at all!

(probably by buying something and not seeing how to opt out, albeit I think I’m quite hot on this!) It's because often there's nothing and yet they add you to a mailing list anyway. I don't think this is GDPR compliant. I fill out the ICO complaint form when this happens, although I don't think the ICO do much. I had this happen with a local restaurant I got a takeaway from once - they forced you to give your email and phone number to do it online, and then I got marketing messages on both. The food was good, but for this reason I won't be ordering from them again.

Can your email block?

I have two personal emails, one a newer one on Protonmail I use for orders where I use SimpleLogin for pseudonyms when I order things to avoid future marketing and the email being sold on or leaked. However, I have a very long-standing email account from a provider in my home country and over the past year or a couple, they've started putting marketing emails into my inbox from affiliates and there's no way to block these except by switching to a paid account. I don't want to do that because you can get a free service for the same elsewhere, but neither do I want to give up the account completely as I've been using it for so long.

Direct everything to a different folder.
or use a separate email for marketing type communications.

Then they won't clog up your inbox but you can look at them, if you have time or inclination.

But yes, daily is ridiculous! I want occasional updates and offers, but I can't get those without constant spam.

My GMail is pretty good at putting them into a separate folder

Completely agree. Like you I unsubscribe when it's a brand I'm not interested in, but I do like to get sale emails from brands I like... but not every day, even multiple times a day. And at this time of year you're buying presents from companies you don't normally use, and that adds to the deluge.

I've just checked and I've had 22 sales emails since 6am.

Yanbu. Junk function not as good as it used to be.