Use case
Free trials & loyalty cards
Sign up for the trial, the discount, the loyalty programme, the petition — without setting yourself up for a decade of marketing email.
Best for
Anyone who'd genuinely like the 10% off but doesn't want to live with the consequences.
The workflow
How it runs end to end
- 01 Create a "throwaway" alias just for sign-ups
- 02 Use it whenever a form asks for an email in exchange for something
- 03 Forward to your real inbox if you actually want to read the messages
- 04 Pause it the moment a single sender becomes a problem
- 05 Replace it entirely if it gets too noisy
The signup tax
Almost everything online now asks for an email address before it lets you do anything. Most of those addresses end up sold, leaked, or repurposed for “selected partner” mailing lists nobody ever signed up for. Once your real address is on those lists, you generally can’t get it off.
The fix is the email equivalent of using cash for things you don’t want on a statement: a separate alias for any sign-up where you’re trading email-for-perk.
A “rewards” alias for life admin
The pattern that works for most people is one persistent “signups” alias they use everywhere a real email feels excessive — coffee shop loyalty cards, supermarket apps, free trials, online petitions, contests, “subscribe to our newsletter for 10% off”. Mail goes to the real inbox so you don’t miss the promo codes you actually want, and the alias takes the long tail of marketing.
When the noise gets too loud, you delete the alias and create a fresh one. Your real inbox never knew it existed.
When granular makes sense
For situations where you suspect you’ll want to know who leaked you, use a per-vendor alias instead. Sign up to one retailer with retailer-name@yourdomain and another with other-retailer@yourdomain. When unrelated junk starts arriving at the first alias, you know exactly which retailer sold their list.
This is one of those small habits that pays off slowly — the difference between gradually losing control of your inbox and confidently using sign-ups as a tool.