You Should Determine How Can Someone Contact You

When email was first created in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, every email in your inbox was a personal message and opening your email was a pleasant experience.

Today, there are 300 billion emails sent every day and over 90% are sent by bots.

Companies armed with marketing automation software can send millions of emails with a single click, and email users have no defense. 

In fact, if you are a buyer of software or services, your email address, phone number, and LinkedIn profile are no longer private in any way:

• Your contact information is available for a few cents online.
• More than 8,000 tools exist (just in the marketing space) to automate messages to you.
• Increasingly, AI is used to craft emails.
  

When you open your inbox each morning, you spend your most productive time sorting through emails from people you don’t know.

In the current landscape of Product-Led Growth (PLG), there has been a lot of talk about the shift towards a “buyer-driven” sales process.  

• On the positive side, PLG companies give buyers more control during the buying cycle, allowing them to trial products for free and scale up usage as needed.
• However, in a PLG world, it’s no longer just executives who are being sold to. Now, many more individuals are targeted as potential buyers and overwhelmed with cold outreach.
  

What's the best way to stop unwanted emails?

The best way to stop unwanted emails is to add Gated to your inbox so that all unknown senders have to donate to your favorite nonprofit in order to reach you ;)

Cheeky answer aside, Gated is on a mission to allow you to control who reaches you, and how. We begin with email because it is a lynchpin of sales and marketing efforts everywhere. Our long-term vision is focused on defending you from information overload, anywhere. 

We believe you should control: 

• When you want messages to show up in your inbox.
• Who you want to hear from.
• Which channels you want to receive messages on.
• Which products you want to hear about – or not.
  

To create solutions that make this vision a reality, we are building a company that is truly on your side as an email user. We believe you should not have to pay for tools to protect yourself and your inbox. So, we’ve created a unique model funded by senders that makes Gated free to all users.  

“You should determine how people reach you” is just one part of our Gated Manifesto. You can read the rest of the Manifesto, and learn more about our vision and commitment to make email better.

And you can start using Gated as an email management system that positively impacts society to determine how people can reach your inbox.

Originally published: September 16, 2021