The war on graymail after 90 days: Over 100 million sweeps, cleanups and newsletters filtered

Hotmail introduced advanced features for fighting the war on graymail this past fall, and since then, customers have conquered graymail over 100 million times using features like Sweep and Schedule Cleanup. In this post, I’ll talk about how Hotmail customers are taking control of their email with Sweep, Schedule Cleanup, and Hotmail’s newsletter filter, and we’ll show you how these tools can help you conquer graymail in your own inbox in just 60 seconds.

The best tools for fighting graymail

Graymail—messages  like newsletters, daily deals, and notifications—is filling up inboxes all over the world. Newsletters alone typically make up more than 50% of a person’s email. Managing all that graymail takes time and can be a hassle. Hotmail continues to add innovative features to let you take control of graymail and take back your inbox.

Hotmail’s newsletter category automatically identifies most newsletters and lets you see them all in one place with a single click. One-click unsubscribe lets you get rid of unwanted newsletters instantly.

Schedule Cleanup is a powerful new feature that lets you automatically manage bulk mail. With Schedule Cleanup, you can:

• Keep only the latest message from a given sender (by far the most popular choice when using Schedule Cleanup).
• Delete messages as they get old (3 days, 10 days, 30 days, or 60 days).
• Move messages to a folder as they get old.

Schedule Cleanup not only takes care of the mail you’ve already received, but keeps working for you as you receive new mail. It’s one of the most efficient ways to keep your inbox tidy.

Sweep lets you move or delete unwanted graymail quickly and easily, and can even automatically set up rules for managing new mail as it arrives.

Categories let you organize your mail the way you want. Hotmail automatically categorizes things like newsletters, social updates, photos, Office docs and shipping updates. Now, you can create your own categories and have each one show up as a QuickView.

And of course, these features work well together. Categories can be used together with Schedule Cleanup, making those tools even more powerful. For instance, you can use Schedule Cleanup to delete all newsletters as they get old, just by using Schedule Cleanup on the newsletter category.

100 million actions and counting

It’s been just two months since we finished the deployment of our most recent major release, and we’ve already seen millions of people use these tools to quickly take control of their own inbox. Let’s take a look at some of the numbers.

Since November, 2011, customers have performed over 100 million actions to conquer graymail: Sweeping, categorizing, and using Schedule Cleanup.

• You’re using Sweep to get unwanted email out of your inbox: 90% of Sweep actions are “Delete all from this sender.”
• You’re letting Sweep set up rules automatically: When you use Sweep to move mail from a given sender into a folder, you let Sweep automatically set up a rule 60% of the time. That means Sweep keeps working for you as you get new email, even when you are away from your inbox.
• You’re using Schedule Cleanup to keep only the most recent newsletter or deal: 65% of Schedule Cleanup actions are “Only keep the latest message from this sender.”

And what’s more, we’re seeing an increasing use of these powerful tools. Each month, more people use Sweep and Schedule Cleanup to get rid of their graymail. In fact, we’ve seen a double-digit increase in the use of these features month-over-month since our October release.

Take back your inbox in 60 seconds

The best news is that these tools are quick and easy to use. In this video, we’ll show you how you can take back your own inbox in just 60 seconds.

More and more people are using Hotmail’s innovative tools to fight their own war on graymail, and we hope you’ll give these tools a try yourself. We’d love to hear about your own experience using Sweep, Schedule Cleanup, categories, and the rest.

As always, thanks for using Hotmail.