The one-click unsubscribe feature aims to make it easier to unsubscribe to those newsletters for which it seems impossible to find the opt-out link. When you click on the unsubscribe button, Microsoft will handle the opt-out for you and use a sweep feature to clean up your Microsoft Hotmail and get rid of all the old newsletters from that sender. Hotmail is declaring war on what it calls "graymail" in the most recent makeover of its web-based email product. Microsoft defines graymail as unwanted email, such as legitimate newsletters, offers and notifications you no longer want.
Tackling graymail takes the inbox clutter battle to another level. Dick Craddock, a group program manager for Hotmail, said 75 percent of email identified as spam by Hotmail customers actually turns out to be unwanted graymail that they receive as a result of having signed up on a legitimate website.
No Mass Exodus
To address that challenge, as well as the issue of important messages getting lost in the clutter, Hotmail now offers five new features: a newsletter category, one-click unsubscribe, schedule clean-up, flags and advanced folder-management. Will it cause webmail users to switch to Hotmail?
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have all been trying to make the inbox more efficient and less cluttered with spam or low-priority mail. However, Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, said the switching costs for email are significant for people who are invested in a webmail address.
"A new email address looks more like a randomized password than your name. I might get gsterling7769, for example. That's another disincentive to switch," Sterling said. "It's unlikely that these changes will be motivating switching. However, for existing, heavy Hotmail users these are going to be useful tools and features."
One-Click Unsubscribe
Microsoft delivered automatic categorization of social updates, messages that contain Office documents, messages with photos, and even shipping notifications in its last Hotmail update. Now, Microsoft is adding a special category for newsletters.
"Right out of the gate, we're 95 percent accurate with the mail we categorize as newsletters, and this will only get better as you help us build the feature by categorizing or uncategorizing your own mail," Craddock said. "In fact, every time you categorize an email as a newsletter, you help make our filtering better for yourself and every other customer ."
The one-click unsubscribe feature aims to make it easier to unsubscribe to those newsletters for which it seems impossible to find the opt-out link. When you click on the unsubscribe button, Microsoft will handle the opt-out for you and use a sweep feature to clean up your mail and get rid of all the old newsletters from that sender. Any new ones that come from that domain land right in the junk folder.
Clean Up the Clutter
"There are other times you want to keep getting the newsletter, but only want to keep the latest copy," Craddock said. "This is great for shopping sites or deals where the newsletter is really only useful for the first week and then the offer expires or a new newsletter takes its place."
Schedule Cleanup lets you keep only the latest message from a given sender, delete messages as they get old at time intervals you choose, or move messages to a folder as they get old. Meanwhile, a Flags feature lets you keep email messages that are most important to you front and center . When you flag a message, it goes straight to the top of your inbox. You can also set rules to auto-flag incoming mail from certain senders.
Finally, there are advanced folder-management tools. You can use a drag-and-drop feature to create new folders inline and a right-click menu lets you mark everything in the folder as read, or rename, empty or even delete the folder. Craddock hinted that more new features would roll out in the coming weeks.
