Assuming the message actually contains information, and not a login link, lots of email updates is great. It means I automatically get a local copy of the message stored, so if I want to look it up, I have it immediately available, regardless of my current network connectivity.

I use Gmail's support for aliases, by putting a '+' symbol after my user name, followed by a alias, so that the messages can be easily filtered. I then add the alias to Gmail's server-side filtering to move the message to an IMAP folder for messages from vendors/distributors.