SUMMER SERIES Ep 1 — Email Cleanup

Your teacher conference ends, you feel inspired, and then your inbox gets hit with a wave of vendor promos you never asked for. We hear you. We talk through a question from Jessica in Tennessee and get very specific about how those emails end up in your inbox, what’s normal, and what’s avoidable when you’re moving through exhibit halls, giveaways, badge scans, and “free resource” forms.

We also pull back the curtain on a piece many educators don’t realize: some conferences may share an attendee list with vendors, especially at smaller events. That doesn’t make the overwhelm any less real, but it explains why the emails arrive so quickly and why they can feel so persistent. Understanding the pipeline helps you make better choices next time you’re tempted by a free download or a quick booth chat.

Then we shift into practical inbox management you can do in minutes. We walk through the simplest move first: using the unsubscribe tools your email client already offers (Gmail makes this especially easy). If you want to keep an occasional vendor update without letting it hijack your day, we talk about setting up automatic filters that send specific senders or keywords straight to a folder. And when unsubscribing fails, we cover when it makes sense to mark a message as spam so your provider learns what you don’t want.

If you’re trying to protect your summer break and start the school year with less digital clutter, this quick listen gives you a clean, realistic plan. Subscribe for more short, useful answers, share this with a colleague who’s drowning in conference emails, and leave a review with your best inbox tip.

Transcript

Summer Series Quick Welcome

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Hey there, and welcome back to the Minimalist Educator Podcast. The podcast that fits perfectly into your summer break. Over the next few weeks, the Minimalist Educator Podcast is keeping it short and sweet. Just quick answers to the questions you've been wondering about. Perfect for however much summer break you've got left today. A coffee break, a pool lounge, or those first few minutes before you remember you don't have to lesson plan. So relax, you've earned it. Quick questions, quick answers, all summer long. Let's dive in to today's question.

Jessica’s Conference Email Problem

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Hello and welcome back to our summer series at the Minimalist Educator Podcast. We have episode number two. What is our question for today, Tammy?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Today we have a question from our friend Jessica, who's in Tennessee. And the summertime tends to be heavy in conferences in North America. So June, July are pretty conference-heavy. And so Jessica's question was: how do you deal with promotional emails after attending conferences? This is such an annoyance. I love ideas on how to tackle unsolicited emails. So, yeah,

How Vendors Get Your Address

SPEAKER_00 1:28

true. I mean, I get them too. And I think there's a couple of things that happen there. So when you're in the exhibit hall, sometimes they capture your emails, right? Because whatever you're talking about and it might be of interest at the time. But then there's also some conferences, smaller ones in particular, that will give the email the attendee list to like the conference participant list to the vendors. And so you will sometimes get those emails that I think participants don't always know that the vendors will potentially get those emails. And so that can be a bit frustrating. But at the same point, or at the same time, those vendors usually pay a lot of money to be at those conferences. So I can see why they get those lists. But specific to Jessica's question, how do you deal with the emails?

The Simple Unsubscribe Habit

SPEAKER_00 2:25

On my end, I just end up doing like an easy unsubscribe. Like if it's not something that I know that I'm gonna want to look at each, you know, however often they send the emails, Google makes or Gmail makes it so easy now to just unsubscribe from something. So I'll tend to do that. I don't know what that looks like on the back end for successfully unsubscribing. I'm assuming it works because when I send emails to people through the email provider that we use, people unsubscribe and then I go in and delete them so that they don't get so there is another step in the background. So I'm not sure there, but for me, it's just a simple don't need this. How about for you when you've got even just regular emails that you're like, how am I on this list?

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Yeah, that's annoying. That is definitely annoying when that happens.

Filters To Protect Your Inbox

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Yeah, the unsubscribe button is definitely the key, I think. You can set up automatic filters like any emails from this or someone like this talking about this keyword. You can go straight into a folder as well. But I think it's just staying on top of it because before you know it, you can have all of these things and your inboxes are just going crazy. And then it actually takes, you know, a little bit of uh maintenance work to make sure that you're you're unsubscribing and getting off those lists. So yeah, it is a tricky one because you know, even if you want to scan something and get a free download, you often have to put in your email and then it's out there and you know you're getting all sorts of mail from people. So I totally understand the question and the annoyance of it, but I think a little bit of admin work can can sort it out for us.

When To Mark Emails As Spam

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Yeah, I like the idea of the filtering. I didn't even think of that, honestly. And then some stuff, I mean, I don't know if you need to mark it as spam necessarily. But it I think it maybe if it if it keeps coming through to you, right? Like if the unsubscribe isn't working, then you have to mark it as spam or whatever the other label is. And if you're using Gmail, I don't know what it's like for Outlook. Yeah, but I think those would be the top two things to work on. Hopefully that helped Jessica.

Wrap Up And Back To Break

SPEAKER_01 5:03

And that's today's question answered. Thanks for spending a few minutes of your summer with us. Remember, quick questions, quick answers, all summer long. We'll see you next time on the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Now go and enjoy the rest of your break.