How to best configure Mailman for my inbox?
Given you understand how your new email workflow looks like, let's get the best possible settings configured for your account. It's easy!
Before anything else, we'll activate Mailman, right after you sign up. Activating it only takes a single click. Click on the Activate Mailman button on your dashboard, and you're done.
Now we'll go through each of the three boxes on your account's dashboard to configure them.
First comes the VIP List. There are some emails that we'd want to receive as soon as possible and act of them immediately. VIP List allows you to configure various domains, email addresses, and keywords as VIP items. Any incoming email matching any of them will bypass Mailman and will immediately land in your inbox.
Click on the Manage VIPs and you'd want to add the following items in your VIP List:
VIP Domains: domain of your company, domain of your bank, or any other financial product you use (eg. stripe.com).
VIP Email Addresses: email addresses of your lawyers, clients, the spouse would ideally go here.
⭐️ **Pro Tip:** If you use Google calendar, adding the following email address would let the meeting reminders come in on time: calendar-notification@google.com
VIP Keywords: adding the following keywords would make sure that time-sensitive emails land in your inbox immediately: confirm, verify, password, OTP, security alert, reset.
Once done, your VIP List should look something like the following.
Hit the Save changes button and you're done.
Next, we'll need to configure when should Mailman deliver the non-VIP emails. To do this, we'll need to Manage delivery.
The most used configuration is to set a custom schedule with the following three times:
07:30 am: first thing in the morning to see if there are any important emails that came in since yesterday that requires immediate action
01:30 pm: right after the lunch to act on the important emails before getting engrossed in the deep-work
04:00 pm: towards the end of the day to wrap up any pending emails that deserve your attention
⭐️ **Pro Tip:** Adjust the hours according to your own daily schedule. The above hours are used to communicate the idea of keeping separate time slots in your day to tackle your inbox.
The next important part is to configure the time for the daily summary. Every day in the evening, Mailman will send the summary of your inbox. It'll also contain information about any emails that are held back from you for your review. By default, it is set to be delivered at 04:30 pm daily.
In the end, your delivery settings would look like the following.
Hit the Save changes button and you're done.
Lastly is the daily digest. It does not require any configuration, but once it starts to catch potential spam from your inbox, you'll need to spend 5-10 minutes a day to review the collected emails.
The process starts with you receiving your daily summary for the day. It'll look like this:
It tells me that Mailman has held back 6 emails for my review. I'll click on the Review 6 Emails button in the email, and will land on this screen in my account.
Here, I have an option to take the following actions on the potential spam.
Allow: tells Mailman to not consider it spam next time, and deliver emails from them to you inbox
Block: confirms that it indeed is spam and should be kept away from your inbox in the future
Allow Once: tells Mailman to delivery this one particular thread for now, and continue to capture future emails from them for your review
Mark as reviewed: select the checkboxes on the left side and click on "Mark as reviewed" to tell Mailman to ignore this email but continue to hold back their future emails for review
That's all! There's nothing else to Mailman. With the above powerful tools at your disposal, you'll achieve a peaceful and calmer inbox in no time.
⭐️ **Pro Tip:** Our most happy users are the ones who actively review the emails held back by Mailman (at least once a day). Over time, it takes less and less time to review your emails. After 7-10 days, it'll take less than 5 minutes to review your emails once a day.
⭐️ **Pro Tip #2:** You can always review your emails without waiting for the daily summary email using the third box on your dashboard.
Activate
Before anything else, we'll activate Mailman, right after you sign up. Activating it only takes a single click. Click on the Activate Mailman button on your dashboard, and you're done.
Now we'll go through each of the three boxes on your account's dashboard to configure them.
VIP List
First comes the VIP List. There are some emails that we'd want to receive as soon as possible and act of them immediately. VIP List allows you to configure various domains, email addresses, and keywords as VIP items. Any incoming email matching any of them will bypass Mailman and will immediately land in your inbox.
Click on the Manage VIPs and you'd want to add the following items in your VIP List:
VIP Domains: domain of your company, domain of your bank, or any other financial product you use (eg. stripe.com).
VIP Email Addresses: email addresses of your lawyers, clients, the spouse would ideally go here.
⭐️ **Pro Tip:** If you use Google calendar, adding the following email address would let the meeting reminders come in on time: calendar-notification@google.com
VIP Keywords: adding the following keywords would make sure that time-sensitive emails land in your inbox immediately: confirm, verify, password, OTP, security alert, reset.
Once done, your VIP List should look something like the following.
Hit the Save changes button and you're done.
Delivery Slots
Next, we'll need to configure when should Mailman deliver the non-VIP emails. To do this, we'll need to Manage delivery.
The most used configuration is to set a custom schedule with the following three times:
07:30 am: first thing in the morning to see if there are any important emails that came in since yesterday that requires immediate action
01:30 pm: right after the lunch to act on the important emails before getting engrossed in the deep-work
04:00 pm: towards the end of the day to wrap up any pending emails that deserve your attention
⭐️ **Pro Tip:** Adjust the hours according to your own daily schedule. The above hours are used to communicate the idea of keeping separate time slots in your day to tackle your inbox.
The next important part is to configure the time for the daily summary. Every day in the evening, Mailman will send the summary of your inbox. It'll also contain information about any emails that are held back from you for your review. By default, it is set to be delivered at 04:30 pm daily.
In the end, your delivery settings would look like the following.
Hit the Save changes button and you're done.
Daily Digest
Lastly is the daily digest. It does not require any configuration, but once it starts to catch potential spam from your inbox, you'll need to spend 5-10 minutes a day to review the collected emails.
The process starts with you receiving your daily summary for the day. It'll look like this:
It tells me that Mailman has held back 6 emails for my review. I'll click on the Review 6 Emails button in the email, and will land on this screen in my account.
Here, I have an option to take the following actions on the potential spam.
Allow: tells Mailman to not consider it spam next time, and deliver emails from them to you inbox
Block: confirms that it indeed is spam and should be kept away from your inbox in the future
Allow Once: tells Mailman to delivery this one particular thread for now, and continue to capture future emails from them for your review
Mark as reviewed: select the checkboxes on the left side and click on "Mark as reviewed" to tell Mailman to ignore this email but continue to hold back their future emails for review
That's all! There's nothing else to Mailman. With the above powerful tools at your disposal, you'll achieve a peaceful and calmer inbox in no time.
⭐️ **Pro Tip:** Our most happy users are the ones who actively review the emails held back by Mailman (at least once a day). Over time, it takes less and less time to review your emails. After 7-10 days, it'll take less than 5 minutes to review your emails once a day.
⭐️ **Pro Tip #2:** You can always review your emails without waiting for the daily summary email using the third box on your dashboard.
Updated on: 10/02/2024
Thank you!