Greymail – What is it and what can you do about it?

A little while ago I was invited to a special event with Microsoft to talk about something known as Greymail. What’s that you may ask, and why is it important? Well read on to find out.

What is Greymail?

Greymail is the ever-growing amount of newsletters, deals and updates that fill your inbox. Sometimes you love it, sometimes you hate it. Here’s how greymail happens.

Defeating Greymail

Hotmail and now the new Outlook.com have built-in features to help you defeat Greymail, including sweeping, one-click filters, aliasing and much more.

I was a little dubious at first but then I gave it a try and it works very well.

For example, I receive a lot of emails on a daily basis and often I don’t get a chance to go through them for a while, sometimes for weeks. Now if you think that some of those emails are “daily” and are time relevant, for example daily newsletters, when I got back and work through my inbox an email from six weeks ago about some offer on that day is no longer important or useful to me. So I can use some of the features, such as sweep, to just “sweep” all those particular emails that I define (with a simple click or two) into my trash, leaving me only the latest and relevant versions.

There is even a fun game you can play on either your iPhone, Android, or Windows phone called Greymail inBoxer. This new augmented reality gaming experience from Hotmail. Virtual emails are falling from the sky in the physical space all around you.

Catch and sort as many emails as you can to play this unique and immersive game. It’s quite fun – why not give it a go?

What’s your inbox like?

You can see what which category you fall under by visiting this Microsoft site.

In my case, my inbox is a happy mess and I’m a Piler (check out the graphic at the start of this article). Which are you? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

So do you suffer from Greymail? If you so, like most of us, then you need to do something about it.