If you are familiar with the above quote, then you have probably experienced it. From an excited child gorging on candy to a frazzled adult overstimulated on a vacation, too much of anything can be a detriment. That applies to email as well. Consider the following major sources of gray mail:
Newsletters
Have you ever signed up for a newsletter from a company that you want to receive information from, only to get too much info? Frustrated, you delete one newsletter after another. Although you want to receive the information they are providing, it's just too much to look through. In other words, whatever benefit is derived from the newsletter's contents isn't worth the time it takes to sort through.
Coupons, Freebies, and Special Offers
Who doesn't see the value of a discount? Many of us sign up with our favorite companies or manufacturers to receive valuable coupons or good bargains on our favorite products. Unfortunately, sometimes these special offers are couched between ads, useless trivia, or irrelevant information. Often we receive discounts for the products we want... and for those we're uninterested in.
Notifications and Updates
Perhaps you game online, belong to a social network, or shop online. No matter what sort of membership you have online, receiving updates or site notifications is par for the course. When those updates inundate your inbox, however, they go from being a necessary help to a pain in your email.
As detailed above, graymail or gray mail, is different from spam in that you actually did request it. If you signed up for a newsletter or created a membership on a website, you are almost certain to receive some mail. Different websites and circumstances determine just how much mail you receive and how often. To be fair, many companies don't intend to annoy you and simply asking them to send less (or no) mail will be sufficient in reducing it. Other solutions include: marking select email as spam so that future mail will be sent directly to your spam folder, saving the mail in separate folders until you have time to read through it, or designating a separate email address for your graymail.
Too much of a good thing is an easy fix when it comes to graymail.
