Gmail – How to distinguish if I have to filter emails via sender or mailinglist (provider)

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I have a similar problem to the person with this question.

The e-mails I receive aren't totally unwanted though, but legitimate newsletters.
They clutter my inbox though. And as the fella above I noticed that I have difficulties filtering some – but oddly enough not all! – emails coming from a mailing list provider such as AWeber or MadMini. The problem with these pesky mailing list providers is:

Gmail doesn't seem to recognize those as a mailing list in the sense of a collaborative mailing list as it is used by NGO's, political-, student-, mum- and nerd-groups, i.e. usually I cannot filter them by using the "list:" filter that is visible in the third example within my screenshot below:

Example newsletter e-mail addresses and their mailing list providers

Another thing I heard / noticed: Some of these e-mails run via the same mailing list provider, but even though the (individual) sender/marketer doesn't intend it to, the mailing list provider somehow seems to use a different "via" URL! As you can see in the screenshot e.g. in the last example / row. All those little numbers in front of the top-domain seem to regularly and randomly get changed, making it impossible to filter for the domain itself! Except if I would set a wild card for *.mailing-list-provider-A.com. Which is overkill though: What if I want to receive some content from companies that use "mailinglist provider A", but not some e-mails from others that use company A?

Best Answer

Since you're using Gmail there's actually a very easy workaround:

STEP 1: Instead of your main Gmail address, use a Gmail alias when you subscribe to new e-newsletters. For example, if your main email is "bob@gmail.com", use something like "bob+newsletters@gmail.com". (You can use pretty much anything between the "+" and "@" characters. More info on Gmail's alias feature here and here.) And for the newsletters that you currently subscribe to, simply update your email address in their system. (Look for a link at the bottom of their email titled something like "Update Mailing Preferences".)

STEP 2: Create a new label called "Newsletters" in Gmail.

STEP 3: Create a new filter for emails addressed to your alias (e.g. "bob+newsleters@gmail.com") that: A) applies the "Newsletters" label, and B) skips the inbox.

So it's basically just a different way of using filters. Instead of trying to flag down and set up rules for hundreds of different sender addresses and/or subject lines, you only have to implement one simple rule -- for a single recipient address. You can also incorporate stars and certain Gmail labs (like Multiple Inboxes) for even more control.

I've been using this method for years and it really helps free up the inbox.

Related Solutions

Gmail – How to create gmail filter to forward emails which would have stayed in inbox

Gmail applies all filters to all incoming mail (rather than in a specific order like most desktop mail clients). Therefore, You will need to create an additional filter that is the logical NOT of all your other filters. For instance, let’s suppose you have the following filters in place:

from:ebay.com put in folder eBay
from:facebookmail.com put in folder Facebook

Your new forwarding rule would be:

-from:ebay.com AND -from:facebookmail.com forward to important@senders.com

This can prove very tedious and error-prone, unfortunately, especially if you have many filters to invert, and even more so if they use complex rules. Here are a few alternative solutions that may or may not be better, depending on your exact circumstances:

Forward all your email to important@senders.com (in this example) and setup folder rules there.
Ask your friends to email you at your important@senders.com address.
Setup your important@senders.com address to fetch your Gmail email via POP.

To me the best option (and the one I believe best fits your conundrum) is through door #3, provided your email provider (senders.com in this example) supports accessing external accounts using POP. Most email providers do, and it’s very easy to setup:

Click the Gear icon in your Gmail account
Open your Settings.
Navigate to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
Tick either Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded) or Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on, as the case may be.
Under the heading When messages are accessed with POP select delete Gmail’s copy.
Save Changes.
Open the webmail page for your senders.com email address.
Go into its Settings page.
Find a section titled External Accounts, or perhaps POP Accounts.
Add your Gmail account using the following settings:

POP server: pop.gmail.com
Use SSL: Yes
Port: 995
Username: Your @gmail.com address
Password: Your password

If you’ve setup two-factor authentication for your Gmail account you will need to generate an application password, and use it instead for POP retrieval.

The biggest downside to this is you cannot control how often Gmail fetches POP mail. From my own observations as of June 2014, this is ≈ every 70mn. Old tricks to speed this up no longer work since ≈ 2013.

Gmail – How to filter emails from mailing lists that have no “to:” entry

You probably can't see who it's being sent to because the sender didn't put a value in the to: field. This is fairly common for mailing lists and such and is a courtesy; I know I get annoyed when my email address is exposed in a message sent to hundreds of people.

If you open up the message menu and choose "Show Original", you'll get a view of the raw email, including the headers. The "delivered-to:" heading there will let you know who the ultimate recipient was.

To filter these messages, you'll want to use the deliveredto: operator. In your filter, in the "Has the words" field, put

deliveredto:username@example.com

(Obviously, replace the email address with the email address you're filtering for.)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Gmail – How to create gmail filter to forward emails which would have stayed in inbox

Gmail – How to filter emails from mailing lists that have no “to:” entry

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