Idea: Expiring Email Addresses/ Expiring Email Credibility

It used to be a lot easier to change your email address. Open one account, close off or abandon another. Today, with the GSuite/ Workspace that ties your entire life together, it is just about impossible to change your address.

Your email is tied to your calendar, cloud storage, even your e-wallet.
Your email is tied to an untold amount of single-signon (Login With Google!)
How many apps use your gdrive storage to save your specific work?

The result: a squat, unmovable target for an untold number of email marketers, spammers, and identity thieves. I can set up all manner of filters and smash “unsubscribe” a million times over, but the hits keep coming. This weekend alone – between black friday and cyber monday sales – I received 2000 promotional emails.

And it gets worse – these emails lend themselves to powering the sponsored ad emails that are rampant in Gmail. Worse in the mobile app, where my ad blocking capabilities are limited. In all, my email is absolutely worthless.

I know I need to build a whitelist of verified emails that are always sent to priority – messages from real people, notifications from banks, etc. I’m sure I need to make better practices about what I’m using email to sign up for. But still, there are an untold mystery of databases my address exists on that I can do nothing about.

So, maybe, a tool that causes your email address to “expire” with a sender. Most email service providers – Klayvio, Mailchimp, etc. – spent years making sure there sending domains are up to snuff and can clear all of the gmail delivery servers. Unfortunately, this means the company you bought one thing from four years ago can still send you messages – and while you can unsubscribe from the LIST you’re on, there isn’t much stopping these companies from adding your name to a new list without your consent.

For example – if I haven’t opened any of the last 6 emails you sent me, the address expires.

If I haven’t made a purchase with my email address in your system in the last 18 months – expires.1

The key here is that the sending domain maintains its credibility with specific addresses, not necessarily the email host.

Since I started drafting this, 14 new promotion emails arrived.

I guess this has to be done the hard way – a new address for a new, less-Googly era.

Many systems have tools that show publishers the most/ least engaged inboxes – who is or isn’t opening or clicking on links – but google manages to make their inbox system so redundant that it often fools tracking pixels about what is really going on with the sent message. ↩︎

https://dtpennington.com/idea-expiring-email-addresses/