We started this journey of building PhilterIt, the world’s first visual, icon-based email client, on the premise that the personal inbox had turned into an unstructured, relentless stream of content. The vast majority of this content is a result of messages from eager brands trying to reach and delight consumers in their most personal digital home - the inbox. By automatically identifying and filtering brands into icons, PhilterIt quickly and simply makes sense of all of the incoming noise, while allowing users to prioritize the people and brands they care about the most.

The Next Step

But what happens once all of these emails are collected? The Facebook reminders, Twitter updates, LinkedIn requests, daily Groupons? The whole purpose is to read them and take action on them. Up until now, though, that process was no different than it had always been - click on a link and get directed, slowly, to the landing page. With PowerInbox all of that has changed. Users can more quickly “close the redemption loop” and take action on all of that great content within their emails.

Integrating With PowerInbox

PowerInbox’s powerful technology is the future of email interactivity. Users can finally get the utility of all of this great, opted into content directly within their email clients. And PhilterIt is proud to be a partner. By combining our simple, visual interface with PowerInbox’s interactive technology, the email client has taken a giant leap forward. Check out how it works:

We are excited about this next step and we hope to hear from all of you about how you’re using this new feature. To read more, check out PowerInbox’s blog post.

“One person’s trash is another’s treasure.”  Well, you can consider it our gift to you that we’ve given you trash…or, more specfically, a trash can.  As promised, you can now view your sent messages and deleted messages directly within PhilterIt. Additionally, we have created some simple and straightforward tutorials to help make PhilterIt work even better for you.

How to Setup Your Dashboard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y72WZ3-GkQY&feature=plcp

How to Create A Personal/GroupFolder

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYKU08GHrDg 

It’s been a busy month for PhilterIt.  From pitching onstage to 500 people in Chicago, to receiving a nice write-up in Mashable, the word has been spreading.  Read what folks are writing about PhilterIt:

http://angel.co/philterit#press

So what’s your story?  How have your email names changed over the years?

We’ve been busy these past few weeks, not only telling the world who we are but also adding a ton of features and enhancements to our site.  Here’s what you should know:

First, we have completed our design overhaul to a much more stunning and sleek UI.  We’re really pumped with this new look and feel.

We’ve also rounded out the “sending” functions, so that you can reply all, cc, bcc and have your contacts auto-populate with type ahead display.  Also, our search now captures all senders, not just brands, and we pull-in attachments, along with the thumbnail display.

We’ve enhanced our drag-and-drop functionality.  You can now drag any brand from the mail feed to the dashboard to add the icon.  For new icons, you can designate it as either personal or brand, which will show up in the mail feed filter.

Keep the comments and feedback coming by emailing us at feedback@philterit-mail.com.

The other day, I deposited a check at a Wells Fargo ATM, bought an accessory for my computer at the Apple Store, and got some clothes at Bloomingdales.  At each place, I was given the option to forgo the annoyance of carrying around little pieces of paper, which I always lose, and get them sent directly to my inbox. 

Though I am not an environmentalist, I am happy to save the trees (paper receipts account for 640,000 tons of paper used in the US each year. That’s 9,600,000 trees!).  More importantly, I am thrilled to know I don’t have to carry around those little pieces of paper in case I have to return anything or to remember what I bought during the day.  I couldn’t believe half of my wife’s wallet was paper receipts that she has to hold onto in case she returns anything.

Now the only issue with email receipts is finding them in my inbox.  That’s what makes PhilterIt so valuable. All of these emails are automatically filtered for me into their icons.  I found my Apple receipt in ten seconds, my flight confirmation even faster.  As more and more companies email receipts, our inboxes are going to get more information.  PhilterIt is building an inbox which accounts for the future and will help me keep track of the increasing amount of emails from my favorite stores and brands.

We stood on stage a few days ago and unveiled PhilterIt’s new look and feel to the world.  It was awesome.  We told a crowd of hundreds of tech enthusiasts why our clean, simple and intuitive interface is a better way to experience email.

How did we convince the crowd?  What was our hook?  Simple - we showed them a visual.  Namely, a slide full of bullets.  We said, “How is this slide working out for you?  Too many bullets.  Too many words.  Now think about your inbox.  All of that content, all of that information…all of those lines of text.”  That’s been the story we have been telling for a year, and that’s the story that prompted the most audience votes to go to the statement, not question, “Hell yeah! Finally! That’s brilliant.”

We’re going to continue to work hard to wow our users and bring a brilliant new email experience to them, and we invite the rest of you to join in the fun.  

Today, I still rely on my training from childhood to find a deal.  However, rather than sift through a Tupperware bin, I scan through my Inbox to find the latest 30% off discount or Free Shipping promotion.  But now I’m starting to wonder if the benefits of these promotions – these diamonds in the rough – truly outweigh the costs in terms of time and frustration in dealing with an exploding inbox.  I tried to create filters, but I quickly realized that for each filter I set, it seemed like there were three more brands that popped-up and needed to be dealt with.  It was like trying to save time by, well, wasting time.  That didn’t make sense.  I also found that for those brands I did filter, it was out of sight, out of mind.  I meant to go back to them.  I really did.  But once they were gone, they were gone.  So I still missed deals that I wanted to find.

And, of course, there were the angry phone calls and texts.  “Did you get my email?” “What email?”  “I sent it to you this morning!”  Oh…right, that one.  My personal messages were getting lost in the shuffle, buried and seemingly gone forever.  So now I was stuck trying to create filters, incessantly delete, unsubscribe then resubscribe, bug my friends to forward me deals for brands I didn’t want to sign up for anymore (you know, those 3x-a-day email offenders) only to lose THOSE forwards in my inbox.  ERGGHHH!!! What a mess.

PhilterIt takes care of all of that for me.  I import my existing account (no changing addresses), select the brands I want to follow, and then I’m brought to my inbox.  I have all the brands I care about right there in front of me.  I can click or unclick the filter on my mail feed, so that only personal messages are highlighted.  And I can set up new icons by dragging and dropping – so now my friends and family have their own homes within my inbox. 

If I had to use one word to describe PhilterIt, I would choose “familiar”.  Now if only S’mores Crunch would start sending me messages…

At PhilterIt, we’re drawing a line in the sand:  icons are better.  Much better.  Think road signs, your iPhone or dimples.  One quick glance and you know what to do (or whom to date).  Heck, we’ve staked our futures on the simple premise that our lives will be easier if our inboxes weren’t one crushing line of text after another.  And we’re already hearing things like “I love this” and “I can’t look at my old inbox anymore.”

The most fun part of building this brand new email interface is hearing the different ways people use it.  One mom has an icon for the PTA, an icon for the homeowners’ association and an icon for her kids’ piano teacher.  She tells us that it’s more than just organizing her email – it’s making it easy for her to get things done in a way that’s so simple that she didn’t realize just how much better PhilterIt was for her until she accidentally signed into her old client.  An old college buddy of ours has a fantasy football icon, a bleacher report icon and an icon for his girlfriend.  He got in trouble when she found out she wasn’t in the top left corner (luckily drag/drop made it easy for him to rearrange those icons).  And our friend Morgan, super-shopper extraordinaire, tells us she loves having her “very own e-mall in her e-mail”.  Clever.

We love the great response we’re getting from our earliest users and we’re excited to extend more and more invitations to the folks on our list.  

Welcome to PhilterIt!  After months of testing we’re excited to be out in the world for our closed beta launch.  Our premise is simple – we think it’s time the inbox got an upgrade.  So we created PhilterIt for all of the online shoppers, brand lovers, daily deal fanatics, newsletter junkies and visual aesthetes out there.  We have designed our site to be as simple and intuitive as possible – create filters through simple drag and drop functionality, delete tons of emails from a single sender with one click of a button, and customize your dashboard with your favorite brands so you never miss an important message.

We have created this site for you, the user.  So give us feedback (feedback@philterit-mail.com) on how we can make the experience better for you.  Let us know if we are missing any brands that you want automatically filtered.  And above all, keep an eye out for the amazing list of updates that we plan to roll-out in the coming months to make this experience even more seamless.

For those of you dying to be an early user of PhilterIt, request an invitation, and we will make sure you’re in the next batch.

Thanks for choosing PhilterIt as your new visual inbox, and we’re pumped that you’re along for the ride.