Did you know that the number of regular spam emails in the US was estimated to be eight billion in 2023? There is no denying that spam emails can be frustrating. Sorting them out can be even more frustrating because it can clog your inbox. Moreover, spam messages may lure you into online scams and even inject malware into your device. 

Considering all these factors, the good news is that you can follow some strategies to block spam emails and clean up and manage your inbox. A spam folder can help de-clutter your inbox by locating a particular space for spam. However, these folders have their limitations, too, so you need some additional tools to manage them. 

In this article, we will discuss everything about spam folder management and what are the essential tools to manage spam folders. Let's start.

What is Spam Folder Management?

Spam folder management is the process of organizing, managing, and controlling junk emails. Its major functions include:

1. Filtering Spam Emails: This involves automatically identifying and moving suspicious emails from the primary inbox to a spam folder. 
2. Reviewing Spam Folder: This process involves checking the spam folder to ensure legitimate emails are not mistaken for spam.
3. Whitelisting: This means adding trusted senders to a whitelist to ensure their emails go directly into the inbox.
4. Customizing Spam Filters: This involves adjusting the spam filter settings to customize the email system’s sensitivity to unwanted emails. 

5 Essential Tools to Simplify Spam Folder Management

Spam checks are vital for emails. Therefore, you must know how to manage your email spam folder to avoid missing important business communications and keep your inbox clean. This helps ensure your inbox remains secure and organized. 

That is why we have curated a list of five essential tools that can help you with spam folder management.

1. Clean Email

Clean Email is an intuitive tool for managing your inbox efficiently. It is known for its powerful algorithms and organizes your emails into easy-to-manage folders, ultimately allowing you to clear the clutter with just a few clicks.

The best part about Clean Email is that it helps you get rid of old emails that are bloated with unnecessary files or irrelevant to your current work. The same platform also includes tools that allow you to group, segment, and label emails. You can archive the emails to keep them permanently or review them later.

Key Features

• Smart views for email categorization
• Auto clean for automatic email management
• Unsubscribe to opt out of all unwanted subscriptions
• Privacy guard to protect email data

2. SaneBox

SaneBox is an intelligent email management tool that can help you prioritize important messages and filter out unwanted ones. This helps determine which emails are significant and ensures that distractions are kept to a minimum. With SaneBox, you can expect a cleaner inbox and a more focused email experience.

The tool also offers AI-driven filtering solutions that save you hours by only showing you only those emails that matter. Its intuitive features enable you to maintain a zero-inbox goal with minimal effort.

Key Features

• Sorts email into categories automatically
• Defers all the non-urgent emails to a later time
• Tracks follow-ups and also snoozes messages

3. Unroll.Me

Unroll.Me is an easy-to-use tool that assists with managing the subscription emails you want to send out. The platform is known for its simplicity and the performance of cleaning your inbox. 

This process helps to cut down the time you spend handling your emails enormously. It is effective for the audience that often receives numerous marketing emails and newsletters. The flexibility granted by this tool can evidently improve the day-to-day usability of emails.

Key Features

• Unsubscribe with just a single click from unwanted subscriptions.
• Keep all your favorite subscriptions organized.
• Discover all kinds of new subscriptions and manage them.

4. Mailstrom

Mailstrom is a tool for easily managing emails. Notably, the tool allows users to sort and filter the inbox in several natural ways. It is also used for tags and labels, quick moves, and deletes, which are also called bulk actions. This enhances the possibility of managing numerous messages because of its large capacity for handling bulk emails.

This tool's approach to decluttering does not simply eliminate unwanted emails. It is about reminding people of the concerns that they tend to overlook due to an overabundance of daily spam emails. 

Mailstrom’s analytics offer additional PRO information regarding your email tendencies. This also assists in managing your inbox effectively, as it eliminates much of the work done manually.

Key Features

• Identify important emails instantly
• Unsubscribe from all unwanted lists with ease
• Use powerful filters to sort through clutter.

5. Spark

‍

Spark is a smart email tool that can help you focus on what is important and what needs to be moved away from a spam folder. The tool is mostly known for its intelligent inbox feature that automatically categorizes emails. This allows you to sift through newsletters, personal emails, and notifications automatically. Spark's collaborative features also make it a standout choice for teams that want to manage their emails together.

The tool has some powerful search capabilities that allow you to find any email in seconds. It also saves you valuable time in your day-to-day activities.

Key Features

• Smart Inbox that prioritizes all kinds of important emails
• Snooze emails for later
• Send later options
• Advanced email Search

Comparison Analysis

How to Avoid Spams and Keep Your Inbox Clean?

Now that you know a bit more about spam folder management, here are six important strategies that can help you block all kinds of spam emails from reaching your inbox.

1. Choose a Quality Email Hosting Provider 

The best way to prevent spam emails from getting into your business inbox is to use a quality email provider. It enables you to access the most up-to-date security features that help protect your business against email threats.

Several platforms offer excellent email hosting service that lets you set up a custom domain that matches your official website domain.

You may also get a dedicated IP address with the same platforms. This can help ensure that your email messages never end up in the spam folder. Not only that, but with the latest suite of security tools, you can protect yourself against all kinds of spam emails, ransomware attacks, and phishing emails.

An email hosting provider backs up all your email data even if you do encounter malicious threats. Therefore, you can restore your inbox easily if your data gets altered or deleted.

2. Block Email Addresses and Report Emails as Spam

You can delete spam emails that come into your inbox naturally. However, this may not stop spammers from sending more malicious emails in the future.

An effective way to prevent spam is to report such emails to your email client, like Gmail and Yahoo Mail. They can help block some specific email addresses that may sound suspicious. For instance, you can report spam by ticking the box to the left of the email and selecting the Report Spam Option on Gmail. 

You can also permanently block the email address to prevent future spam from the same source. However, be careful how you do this since opening spam emails can also trigger more junk emails from other spam accounts.

3. Use Email Authentication Protocols

You can use email authentication protocols, like SPF and DKIM, to block suspicious emails from your business inbox. Most quality email services provide such email authentication by default.

This way, you can see options that enable you to inspect the full email header when you receive junk mail or spam. This often reveals the results of the SPF and DKIM checks. Then, these protocols verify the integrity of the message to ensure that the emails are legitimate.

Meanwhile, you can also set up some important DMARC policies to tell your email server what to do with emails flagged as spam.

4. Change Your Email Privacy Settings

Another way to block spam emails is to change your email privacy settings and de-clutter your inbox. This way, you can always reduce your exposure to spam.

You must also be careful about the individuals and organizations that you usually share your business email address with. You can implement strong passwords and multi-factor authentication to secure your accounts. 

You can easily adjust your email privacy settings within an email client to prevent third parties and advertisers from accessing your email address.

For instance, you can do this on Gmail by clicking on your account icon in the top right corner of your inbox. Then, select “Manage your Google Account” and use the menu to the left of the screen to choose the Security Option. 

5. Unsubscribe From Newsletters and Mailing Lists

There may be times when you subscribe to a particular website and inadvertently agree to terms that enable the site to share your details with spam subscription lists.

Fortunately, you can unsubscribe from these emails easily and instantly. If you open an email, you will often find an Unsubscribe link at the bottom.

Alternatively, you can pull up all the emails that you can unsubscribe from if you enter “unsubscribe” into the search bar of your inbox. Select the specific emails you never open or read. Then, click on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the campaign.

6. Look for Emails on the Dark Web 

There is always a possibility that your business email address might have been leaked on the dark web. This may expose you to several spam emails and online scams, like spear-phishing attacks.

These dark web scans enable you to find out if your credentials are stolen or leaked in a data breach. Then, you can take the time to secure any compromised email account if this is the case. You can even update your login credentials with strong and unique passwords.

Wrapping up,  

Managing your inbox clutter is essential to improving productivity and efficiency. This means you need a spam folder that is managed so that all your emails are sorted according to their respective categories. You can always streamline your emails, prioritize important messages, and reduce the time spent on email management by utilizing any of the 5 effective tools discussed in this guide. 

Start decluttering today to experience the benefits of a more efficient email workflow. Do you wish to use other advanced features for efficient email management? Visit Neo and access those features now!

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are spam folder management tools?

A spam folder management tool streamlines and optimizes your email management processes. These tools offer a range of features that aim to categorize all your incoming emails, prioritize the important ones, and then delete irrelevant emails. 

The best part about these tools is that they can integrate with email service providers like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo. This makes them more accessible to a broad range of email users.

2. How do I keep my inbox clean and clutter-free?

You can keep your inbox clean by taking the appropriate action and staying on top of your incoming emails. Using different filters or adopting either of the spam folder management tools, you can easily de-clutter your inbox.

3. Are spam emails harmful to my inbox?

Yes, spam emails can be harmful to your inbox. Firstly, such malicious and junk emails add to the occupied space in your inbox. Secondly, a few of these emails may contain viruses or harmful links that may expose you to different kinds of cyber threats. That is why you must sort these emails into your spam folder as soon as possible.

4. What is an inbox spam folder?

An inbox spam folder is a location for storing all unwanted emails. A spam filter often determines these emails. An email spam folder is also called a "junk folder" or "junk mailbox" and is created by mail servers, including the respective user's email program.

5. What happens to the emails stored in a spam folder?

Emails in the spam folder remain in that section for 30 days. After that, these emails are deleted permanently. You can filter out some of these emails beforehand in case any of them are important to you or your business.