Mark All Emails as Read

TL;DR

Why am I building this?

Users are often inundated with emails everyday and are looking for ways to mitigate/reduce the email count
There are email solutions that propose compartmentalising the type of email you get so you are not inundated. E.g. Main, newsfeed, promotions etc but these do not solve the issue of the notification counter and sorting
One way to reduce the notification badge is to introduce a default feature that marks all emails as read after a specified period (except on holidays)
This poses an issue, if all emails are marked as read after a specified number of days then I might miss something. This is where compartmentalisation should come in. As I skim my emails, I can mark as “To respond”, “To read”, “To remind me later” etc.
If you do not take actions on compartmentalising, then it would assume you do not to read them and mark them all as read to reduce clutter

Who am I building it for?

The user who is inundated with email notification badges and counts

When will it be used?

After a specified period. E.g. a day.

Where will it be used?

On an email application. E.g. Gmail or outlook

How could I measure it?

Make the option default and see how measure how many people turn this setting off versus on

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It seems that by the greatest margin, email notifications are the largest and hardest to keep track of. Everyday, people are overwhelmed with inbound emails and may not have enough time to get to inbox zero. Eventually it piles up and they lose track of the number.

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There is a simple fix for this which I believe can help everyone long term:

Mark all emails as read after a specified number of days unless marked otherwise

That is, if you set your refresh rate to 1 day, then everyday you would get a blank new slate. My preference for the max number of days for refresh would be 7 days (with an option of ‘Never’) except if the person is on holiday.

Settings for when to mark emails as read

This solution would also have to be coupled with other filters so people can come back to their inbox when they are ready. E.g. As you go through your inbox, you will have the opportunity to

Mark emails as reply later,
Mark emails as read later

This would enable people to quickly glance at their email, move emails to the right buckets and forget the rest because the email service would take care of it.

The filter buckets would also get cleaned periodically, though a bit longer than the inbox. Ranging from 7-30 days. I.e. If you mark an email as reply later, and you don’t respond within 30 days, it goes into the inbox and it is marked as read.

When an email comes into your inbox, it gives you two options

The Hey email service by Basecamp introduced "The Feed" - A news feed for your newsletter - which solves a lot of problems, especially the problem of getting overwhelmed with newsletters. But it created another problem, it hides emails from you. It is akin to shoving things under your bed and forgetting what is there because it is out of sight.

If people do not want to genuinely receive the emails, then providing an option for them to unsubscribe is better than hiding it.

Automatically marking emails as read after a certain time, gives people the opportunity to first see the headlines of newsletters they are subscribed to and deciding if they want to read it today or not.

There are so many things wrong with email generally but this is a major frustration of mine and I believe this solution will massively help.

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