How to prioritize emails in your inbox by marking them as important

Wouldn’t it be nice if emails from preferred senders always stayed at the top of your inbox, separate from the rest of the emails? Spark now lets you choose Priority Senders whose new emails are always highlighted and shown at the top of your email list, so you can focus on what’s important.

An average person today receives hundreds of emails every month. Take a gander at your email inbox and you’ll find a variety of emails sitting there, waiting for your attention. All these emails can be broadly categorized into the following types:

1. Personal emails from people, including your friends and family members.
2. Notifications and alerts from all the websites and apps you’ve signed up on.
3. Newsletters such as marketing emails, offers & discounts, etc.
4. Unwanted emails or Spam emails that your email service provider failed to classify as Junk and you now have to manually deal with.

Most email apps simply show you a list of emails in your inbox, with the newest email placed at the top. This often leads to inbox overload as new emails keep coming in and cluttering up your inbox — something you have no control over. It may often happen that you may have received an important email that needs your attention, but because newer emails have come in at the top, the email you actually care about is lost somewhere in all the clutter.

An easy solution to this has been to download Spark Mail App and use its Smart Inbox feature that automatically sorts incoming emails into three separate categories — Personal, Notifications, and Newsletters. Smart Inbox sorts emails in decreasing order of priority, with the Personal Emails always at the top, followed by Notifications and then by Newsletters.

The latest release of Spark Mail App introduces Priority Email — a unique feature that allows you to manually choose and mark certain senders as Priority. This ensures that priority emails are always grabbing your attention, separate from all the clutter. For example, you can manually mark emails from your domain registrar as priority, so that you’ll never miss the next renewal warning. Maybe you’d like to mark your credit card transaction emails as priority, especially when you’re traveling. How about marking everything from your manager as a priority? Sounds like a great feature, doesn’t it? 

In this comprehensive guide, you’re going to learn everything you need to know about choosing email senders as priority and how to mark certain emails as important on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows devices.

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JUMP TO:

1. What is a Priority Inbox?
2. How do I prioritize senders and mark emails as important?
3. How do I use Priority Inbox in Outlook, iCloud or other email services?

What is a Priority Inbox?

A Priority Inbox is a special view of your email inbox that sorts emails according to a pre-set order of priority. A Priority Inbox by design helps give you a slightly more organized inbox, so that you can focus on all the important emails while not being distracted or overwhelmed by the clutter of other emails. It also ensures that you do not miss out on emails that need your attention by putting them at the top of your inbox.

Spark now offers Smart Inbox 2.0 along with the ability to manually prioritize certain senders of your choosing. Download Spark for Free and experience a modern, multi-platform email client with an impressive set of features.

How do I prioritize senders and mark emails as important?

To ensure that emails from certain senders always stand out from the rest of the emails, you can mark the senders as “priority senders” so that every incoming email from them is always highlighted & displayed separately by your email client. Here’s how you can prioritize senders and mark emails as important:

1. Download and install Spark on your device. Spark is available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and Windows devices.
2. Sign in with your email account. If you have multiple email accounts, you can add them all in Spark.

4. Open any email from a sender that you’d like to prioritize. 
5. Tap the three dots at the top right of the email.

5. Tap on the Prioritize Sender option.

6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 for all the senders you want to prioritize.

That’s it! You’ve now ensured that all incoming emails from these senders will always be highlighted & displayed at the top of your inbox in Spark.

How to use Priority Inbox in Outlook, iCloud or other email services?

The Priority Inbox feature in Gmail is an immensely popular feature among power users. However, the feature only works when you use the official Gmail apps or Gmail.com in the browser. If you use your Gmail account through a third-party email client via IMAP, the Priority Inbox feature is unavailable. Moreover, not everyone uses a Gmail account, and other email service providers do not offer a Priority Inbox feature of their own. In such a case, how do you use Priority Inbox in email accounts from Outlook, iCloud, Yahoo! Etc.? 

The answer is easy! Switch to Spark. Spark supports email accounts from all the major email service providers, so you can add all your email accounts in Spark and take advantage of the Smart Inbox and Priority Senders features. What’s more, Spark is available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and Windows devices, so you can enjoy the same premium experience across every device.

Download Spark for Free to get started.