Every year the holiday season is by far the biggest time for shopping, both online and off. That also means that it's one of the most active times of the year for marketing and ads, especially email marketing. As with the rest of us, your inbox is inevitably bombarded with dozens of emails from every newsletter, app, and ecommerce site you've ever bought from or signed up for, all advertising their Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.
But what if you don't want these emails? Unsubscribing isn't always an option, as you may like the rest of their content/products. Another option would be to block just these emails. But how?
With Block Sender, you can create very specific blocks to make sure all Black Friday and Cyber Monday (aka BFCM) emails don't reach your inbox. Here are a few ways to do that:
Block by Phrase
Probably the most effective way to block these emails is to simply block the phrases "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday". This should cover most of these emails since these names are most commonly used to identify the sales after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Note: Since phrase blocks are more broad than a subject block or email address block, it might be a good idea to pause or delete these phrase blocks after the sales season ends in order to avoid missing out on random emails containing these phrases.
Block by Email
While phrase blocks may be more targeted and still allow legitimate emails through, certain businesses may increase their email communication altogether to keep their brand front-of-mind. These emails can become excessive and annoying, in which case it's best to just block their email address.
Some websites will send their emails from various addresses. Sometimes this happens because the emails are coming from different departments, and in some cases it is done to avoid being blocked by simple blocking rules. For example, emails might be sent from [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc. In cases like these, it's best to block the entire domain (i.e. example.com) or use a wildcard to match more addresses.
Block by Subject
Some businesses re-use email subjects for their marketing emails since they know what typically works. These subjects may be re-used within the same year or from previous years. Given this pattern, you can block these subjects to make sure that only very specific marketing emails don't get through to your inbox.
Using one of these blocking methods, or a combination of these method, you should be able to block a large portion of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales emails sent to your email address. Have them archived, sent to trash, or permanently deleted, and spend less time on your inbox!
