Spotting valid 'congratulations' emails

BattleMetalChris

I used to do comping about 5 years ago, and have recently got back into it.
In my previous phase, I won a few things - one just showed up in the post, one I got a letter saying I'd won, and one was a plain text email from their marketing team.

My question is this, given that I've not got that much experience - how easy are 'you have won!' emails to spot amongst the torrent of spam that this hobby inevitably produces? 

I set up an inbox specifically for comping, and tend to clear it out every two or three days, I probably get about 40 emails there a day. Of course 99.9% of them, are just marketing emails but these are usually pretty easy to spot as they're all glitzy and professionally designed, so I tend to delete those without reading them. I've been wondering though if I'm likely to have missed any confirmations? Do they tend to come through looking like the fancy marketing emails (or worse, buried within the marketing so you *have* to read all of them), or are they usually typed out plain text ones (which would be a lot easier to spot)? 

Ms_Dee

I get way too many emails, to read them all.
I skim down the list (don't forget your Junk/Spam folder!) If I'm not sure, I check the email address it came from.
Usually it will be from the blogger or company that hosted it, then I check here in the 'Game Over' section to make sure I entered it (although don't always enter ones from this site, if I see one I like on social media I'll enter it, but usually you'll get a message via the social media)

When deleting my emails I usually delete certain ones in bulk, like I have my Freecycle linked to my comping email, so I'll search 'Freecycle' skim them, scroll down and delete them all etc.

Before deleting any, I search 'congrats' in my emails and 'congratulations' which usually pulls up any winning emails I've missed. As not all of them have winner or congratulations in the title.

I very rarely get any fake winning emails to my account, but I do try and only tick the tick boxes I need to required to enter a competition. And do not allow the marketing emails.

BattleMetalChris

Ms_Dee said:

Before deleting any, I search 'congrats' in my emails and 'congratulations' which usually pulls up any winning emails I've missed. As not all of them have winner or congratulations in the title.

Yeah, I've set up a mail rule on my Comping account that'll move anything with 'won', or 'congratulations' in the message into a separate folder, which should hopefully call attention to them

BattleMetalChris

What's the most usual method of hearing about wins then, if not email?

Bridger12

MsDee, I have not won much since starting comping last year, just a few pence with the TopCashback game. I do have a separate email for comping and scroll down each day before deleting. I really like your tip to search congratulations or congrats before finally pressing permanent delete of emails. Thank you

Bridger12

MsDee, forgot I did win a cheque for £50 from take a break!

thingamaBob

Bridger12 said:

MsDee, I have not won much since starting comping last year, just a few pence with the TopCashback game. I do have a separate email for comping and scroll down each day before deleting. I really like your tip to search congratulations or congrats before finally pressing permanent delete of emails. Thank you

You don't need to do searches. Just create another folder and set up a rule for all incoming emails containing say, winner congratulations, congrats and any other words you think relevant, to be moved to the new folder.