A small tutorial guide to help you set up an email filter on Gmail so that you don’t miss an email from anyone, or so that you don’t ever see an email from someone!
Let’s face it, we don’t really bother too much with emails labelled as ‘Promotions’, and delete them or ignore them altogether.
So, it’s pretty frustrating when Gmail labels emails from a particular sender as ‘Promotions’. We sign up for a site’s newsletter because we are interested in what they write or offer, and the emails never reach us (where we check regularly). Bummer.
This depends on various reasons. There may be too many links inside the email; a set of words that Gmail’s AI classifies as ‘promotional’ keywords such as ‘discount’, ‘free’, ‘sale’, and so on. Here’s a list of trigger words.
Bulk emailing services or email marketing services trigger the AI to label them as promotions. It helps to have an organization/company email verified with the emailing service.
Regardless of how carefully you may plan and design your emails, there’s always a possibility of your emails ending up in promotions. So, here’s a method that can help you filter, and it’ll take about 2-3 minutes at most!
So, this tutorial is to help anyone looking for a solution to the email filter problem!
If you’re looking for information on avoiding Promotions label as a sender, then this is NOT for you. But I recommend you read articles about it on Keap, SalesHandy, or Website Planet. They have done a good job of explaining the whys and hows of it.
Prerequisites: You cannot create filters on the Gmail app, so either use the Desktop mode on your phone or better yet, use a desktop!
Step 1
Once you log in to your Gmail, locate an email from the sender you want to use the filter on. Picture below to help demonstrate.
Here I’m selecting an email from Newanced, located in promotions. Click on the email options (three vertical dots), and select “Filter messages like these”.
Step 2
You’ll get a window as shown below.
My goal is to filter emails from Newanced and label them as “Primary” or “Updates”, so I’m leaving all the fields empty except “From”. But you can customize these according to your needs.
You can use filters to send emails, containing particular keywords, to spam as well. So, fill the fields based on your requirements.
Once you’ve done that, click on “Create filter”.
You can see from the image below that Gmail is now showing all the emails from that particular sender.
Step 3
In this window, I have ticked three fields (picture below), of which ‘Always mark it as Important‘ is totally optional.
Again, depending on where you want it, select an option in “Categorize as:”. You can also tell Gmail what label to apply to the emails as well.
Once you’re done selecting options based on your needs, click “Create filter” and you’re done!
Since I wanted all of the emails from Newanced to be moved into my ‘Primary’, I’ve ticked the last option as well. Even if you don’t tick it, Gmail will apply the email filter on future emails.
That’s it! It’s a simple method, yet, shouldn’t be necessary in most cases.
Did this small tutorial help you with your email filter requirements? Let me know!
Thank you!