Today’s post continues a series of short, actionable items called “Do This Right Now.”
In the first installment, we talked about attracting more visitors to your website by changing the title tags.
This time, let’s make sure you’re not losing important emails about gigs and other opportunities.
Check (and Surface) Your “Spam” and “Promotions” Folders!
. . . and the “Junk” folder too
When’s the last time you checked your “Spam” or “Junk” email folders?
What about your Gmail “Promotions” tab?
But I Hate Spam. Why Go Looking For It?
As good as our email services are at keeping junk emails from getting into our inboxes, they’re not perfect.
The fact is, I’ve found dozens of gig request emails in my Spam folder over the years that I never would have seen had I not been proactive about checking it from time to time.
How did they end up there?
Goofy subject lines…unknown senders…or just plain who-knows-what.
It happens.
Gmail Also Separates Your Subscription Emails
Have you signed up for notices from your local arts council about grant opportunities, or joined a competitor’s email list to see who’s hiring them?
Google often parks those emails in a separate folder called “Promotions.”
Again, if you don’t make it easy to check in there, you probably won’t.
And you’ll miss some stuff.
Do This Right Now
- Locate your “Spam,” “Junk” and (if applicable) “Promotions” folders within every email viewer you use (Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, Thunderbird, Opera Mail, etc)
- Drag and drop those folders right next to your inbox or somewhere else where you can see them at a glance without digging around (or go into “Settings” where you can also change the location of each folder). Here’s a great article on doing this with Gmail. The process is similar (and easily searchable on Google) for other email programs.
- Look through each of those folders every few days for a while to see what you might be missing!
Keeping tabs on these folders is truly like finding money from time to time – we can’t blindly rely on algorithms to get this 100% right for us.
Happy hunting, and let me know what you discover! The “Comments” section is below.
About The Blog
Since leaving a white-collar marketing job in 1992, Dave Ruch has been educating and entertaining full-time in schools, historical societies and museums, folk music and concert venues, libraries, and online via distance learning programs.
Along the way, he’s learned a great deal about supporting a family of four as a musician.
The Educate and Entertain blog provides articles, tips, encouragements, and how-to’s for regional performers (in any region) interested in making a great full-time living in the arts.