Swizzle

If you do any sort of online shopping, conduct business online, or just have had an email account for quite some time, you undoubtedly have many newsletters piling up in your Inbox. It's a daunting task sifting through the ones you want to keep and trying to unsubscribe from the ones you want gone.

Swizzle is a free tool that will be welcomed by anyone trying to get a handle on the newsletters and email subscriptions in their Inbox.? With the service and a feature called the Swizzle Sweeper, it's easy to locate and unsubscribe from any emails you receive. In addition, you can compile the newsletters and emails that you want to receive into a simple email digest called the Daily Swizzle.

How it Works
Signing up for TheSwizzle.com is very easy. Enter the email address you want to use the service with at http://theswizzle.com/. Email accounts supported are Gmail, Mac.com/Me.com (iCloud), Yahoo!Mail, and AOL Mail. Swizzle representatives state they are looking to add more email services. Once entered, click the hot pink Go button to the right of the email field.

TheSwizzle does not support Outlook.com. Outlook has its own email sweeper service, unsubscribe capability, and rules you can create. Corporate and self-hosted email servers are also not supported.

I entered my Gmail account. Swizzle really redirected the page to a Google accounts page to give Swizzle access to my Gmail account. The service uses OAuth?an open protocol that allows third-party services such as TheSwizzle to obtain limited access to HTTP services such as Gmail and other email providers. Keep in mind, however, in doing so, you are giving access to a third-party service to your email.

Once granted access, Swizzle starts processing and going through your email account's messages. Of course, the fuller your inbox is the longer it can take. I have 3,295 messages in my Gmail Inbox and processing took a few seconds.

Unsubscribing and Daily Digest-ing
After Swizzle processes your email, its screen displays a list of email messages that have the option for unsubscribing. The Swizzle interface is quite fetching?hot pink and green?and employs the use of a swirling peppermint candy icon that functions as an hourglass when Swizzle is processing an email account. It's easy to navigate and the webpage has a fun, feminine look.?

My Gmail account is also connected with my Google+ account, so I can also subscribe or unsubscribe to any posts Google+ users have included me on that show up in my Inbox as well as any newsletters or any email that TheSwizzle detects can be unsubscribed from.? Next to each item in the Inbox is a button to "Unsubsribe me" or "Move to Digest."

The digest is a collection of newsletters that you want to see on a regular basis. It's delivered to your Inbox on a daily basis. For example, I can compile a digest that features my favorite tech newsletters, posters on Google+, and any correspondence from my favorite stores and brands.

Unfortunately, as of now, you can't create multiple digests for specific topics. I would like to have one digest for all thing tech, another for Google +, and perhaps a third for stores and retailers. The Swizzle teams told me that capability is on the roadmap.

As you click the "Move to Digest" button, the newsletter or Google+ alert moves to the left side of the screen under "Your Daily Swizzle." These newsletters and emails are sent daily to your email as a daily digest for quick, at-a-glance viewing of newsletters and messages that interest you most.

You can add other brands into your Daily Swizzle from the Swizzle Gallery?a collection of thousands of brands and stores from which you wish to receive digital content from. Some brands include Starbucks, Apple, JetBlue and others. This doesn?t mean that you will get bombarded with emails from these companies; rather you will be sent offers from them in your daily digest. You can also browse brands by topic such as Home & Garden, Electronics, Pets and many more.

This branding is an important way that TheSwizzle makes money. According to the Swizzle team, they make a percentage from anything purchased from featured brand sites resulting from delivered offers.

Once you have added the brands and newsletters to your daily digest, you can specify when and how often you want to receive the digest. By default, the digest is delivered to your Inbox every morning at 9:30, but you can pick any day of the week and set delivery morning, noon, or night. If Swizzle creates the option of allowing users to create multiple-subject related digests, hopefully, users will also be able to set delivery options for each digest.

You can save your digest's settings by logging in with your Facebook account or by creating an account via Swizzle (the site recommends to not create the same password as the one used with your email accounts for security reasons).

Fun With Swizzle
TheSwizzle.com is such a simple concept and is a good, although not new idea. Outlook has a sweeper service and there are other services such as SaneBox as well as a host of plugins that can do the same sort of inbox cleanup. What I like most about the TheSwizzle, is how you can compile a customized digest.

Although the granular option of creating multiple digests would be ideal and it needs to support more email services, as it's a fun service. It's an effecient way for professionals to keep up on the newsletters they want to read in their industries and for average users to receive offers and information from their favorite brands, earning 3.5 stars for productivity software, suitable for use by both small businesses and individuals.

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