Manage newsletters and subscriptions
How to handle newsletters and mailing lists in mello: the subscriptions list, unsubscribing, the daily digest, notifications, and what to do with senders who won’t let you go. For a broader method to keep your inbox calm, see how to tame your inbox.
Every subscription in one list
mello finds the newsletters and mailing lists in your recent mail, and lists them by sender, most active first, with how many emails each sent in the last 30 days.
- In the mello webmail, open the Newsletters view above the inbox (or press 6). It shows only newsletters, and each one carries a small news tag in the inbox.
- Choose Manage to open Subscriptions. You can also press ⌘K and type Manage subscriptions.
- Next to each sender, View shows its emails and Unsubscribe leaves it.
When the sender supports one-click unsubscribe, mello sends the request for you and that’s it. Otherwise it unsubscribes by email, or opens the sender’s own page with Finish on the sender’s page. Either way, the emails you already have stay where they are.
The same Unsubscribe button sits among the actions of an open newsletter, so you can leave one the moment you read it.
Unsubscribe the right way
Legitimate senders put an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every message, and most add one to the headers too, which mail apps show as a button. Use it.
- Unsubscribe instead of marking as spam. Reporting a newsletter you signed up for teaches your spam filter the wrong thing, and the sender keeps writing.
- Use the spam button for real spam. If you never signed up, or the link looks odd, don’t click it: report the message and move on.
- Give it a few days. Some senders take a little while to stop. If mail keeps coming after a week, block the sender or file it with a filter.
One digest a day
For the newsletters you keep, mello can do the batching for you.
- Open Settings → Notifications and turn on Daily newsletter digest.
- Under Deliver at, choose a time, for example 18:00.
From then on, newsletters skip the inbox and go to a Newsletters folder. Once a day, at that time, one message arrives in your inbox: each newsletter’s sender, subject and first lines, with a link to open it. On a day without newsletters, no digest comes.
A few things stay as they were. Receipts, alerts and other automatic notifications still land in the inbox, since you may need them right away. Mail that one of your filters files elsewhere, and spam, is left alone. Turn the digest off and newsletters go to the inbox again.
The server does the work, so it also works when you read your mail in Apple Mail or on your phone: they see the Newsletters folder like any other.
Notifications for people only
If you turned on notifications for new mail in mello, newsletters and mailing lists don’t trigger them. You hear about a message from a person, not about a sale.
If you do want them for a list you follow closely, the switch is in Settings → Notifications: Also for newsletters and mailing lists. It applies to the device you turn it on for.
A private address for each sign-up
A private address makes a list easy to leave later, whatever the sender does.
- Open Settings → Aliases and choose New alias. mello makes a random address, such as
quiet.otter.7k2@mello.mx. - Add a Note (only you see it), for example the name of the shop.
- Use that address to sign up.
Mail to it reaches your inbox like any other, and you can reply from it, so the site never sees your real address. Each alias shows how much mail it has received, so you can tell which site shared your address. If a sender ignores your unsubscribe, turn the alias off: its mail is refused, with no bounce sent to anyone. More in Private addresses.
When there is no way out
Some senders give you no unsubscribe link, or ignore it. mello shows This sender doesn’t offer a way to unsubscribe when that’s the case. Two settings take care of them, both in Settings → Auto-reply:
- Blocked senders. Add an address, or a whole
@domain. Their mail goes straight to the Trash. You can also block a sender from an open message’s more menu. - Filters. If the subject or sender contains a word, move the message to a folder, mark it read, or delete it. Useful for a list you want to keep, but never in your inbox.