The Screener, The Feed, and Paper Trail have changed my personal email experience to focus on the important and not stress about the rest.
I started using Hey last year and even wrote up my initial experiences with the unique email service. Now that it has been nearly a year of using it, I thought I would reflect on what I’m getting out of Hey that prevents me from going elsewhere.
The three main features of Hey have changed how I think about email. The Screener, The Feed, and Paper Trail.
I am not compensated in any way to write this. I pay for the Hey email service out of my pocket and use it as my daily email service.
The Screener
The Screener is a unique feature in Hey that prompts you to allow or decline emails from someone before it lands in your inbox. This, in combination with other elements, ensures that when you see an email in your inbox, it is important enough to warrant your attention. I’ve used The Screener to allow emails I want to receive (obviously) and unsubscribe to emails I no longer want. My email is significantly cleaner because of it. Think of it as a door bouncer at a bar.
The Feed
The Feed is another unique feature of Hey email that provides a digest of all of the Newsletters, Marketing, and whatever else you want to include.
The Feed is designed to skim through quickly, and if there is something you want to read, you can click “See More…” to expand it. You don’t mark things as read. You don’t move it to an archive. You read it or don’t, and all items in your feed are deleted automatically after 90 days.
The Feed has changed the way I consume newsletters. This type of email is no longer a “Task” that I must complete; instead, they have become a feed of great content that I may want to consume when I have time.
The Paper Trail
The following unique feature of Hey email is The Paper Trail. You can mark emails from specific contacts directly to your Paper Trail. This is intended for your receipts, statements, invoices, confirmations, etc. It is the email that you need to receive but rarely replies to.
I use the Paper Trail as intended. I skim through it when I have a few minutes. I can see from the email subject what it is, and 98% of the time, I have no action to take. I don’t need to interact with each email, marking it as read or archiving. I only interact with it if necessary.
Take Action
Do you need to use Hey email to get these features? Yes, and no. It’s a mindset change more than anything.
- Set up filters to move newsletters and marketing to a specific folder or label.
- Get into the habit of selecting all and marking them as read. Let your filter do this for you, or ignore them. Not every email needs to be processed!
- Get into the habit of reviewing each incoming email and determine if you need it. Use the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email to unsubscribe appropriately.
