Using a Separate Email Address for Online Promos and Transactions
Shopping Tip #5
Registering with online stores has many advantages. You can be informed of sales and promotions and, often, registered members of the sites get special discount codes, free shipping codes, and offers that the general public doesn't.
But those emails can cause serious clogging of your inbox. I am registered with at least 100 online stores and, with all of them sending me offers, I would be overwhelmed if I hadn't have wizened up after the first few site sign ups.
My suggestion is to use an email address — there are a number of free ones (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, and many others) you can use — for just online transaction and emails.
All your promotional material will go to that inbox as well as your invoices, correspondence with the sites, and shipping notifications.
Not only will all the promotions and sales be easily accessible, you can start a folder for each purchase and add emails as they come. When the order arrives, hold onto that folder until you are 100% sure all is well with the transaction.
I hold onto all my online receipts, correspondence, and orders numbers for a year. That way, if I run into any problems down the road, everything is easily accessible and available to me.
When I get a promo or discount code from a site, I file it by expiration date and store name. If I have no interest in the offer, I delete it.
With this targeted email address, I can go through my offers, checking on expiration dates and codes easily and efficiently. Any spam that comes my way from other sites who manage to get my address is contained within one email address and one inbox.
I use the same inbox for online surveys that I participate in and cash back sites like ebates and fat wallet.
My main email address is not involved at all and everything I need to check on my orders, verify my purchases, and all my special member discount and promo codes are in one place where I can always access them.
I highly suggest that you do register with the online stores you frequent and that you do sign up for their newsletters and email offers. Just make sure you have a separate email address dedicated to online shopping before you start registering.
The emails stack up fast and can easily get lost or clog your personal inbox. A dedicated inbox will assure that you never delete an important offer or a valuable correspondence from an online store.
If you have an issue with an online transaction, everything is in a folder where you can document your transaction and correspondence either with the store itself or, if you have to take your issue further, you will able to provide start to finish documentation of your transaction.
I have over sixty emails offering me special prices, discounts, and free shipping deals from online stores in my "shopping inbox" at the moment as well as several orders in process folders.
It's a great relief knowing everything is going to one email address and I can sign on and select the promo code or discount I want to use without searching through my whole general inbox for the elusive email I am looking for.
Go forth and register and sign up for newsletters and promotions from sites you like. Just use the email address you set up to do so and you'll be more organized and will always be a click away from your deals!
