Add Promotions to Your Calendar so You Don’t Forget About Them
As I was chatting with some helpful, albeit semi-robotic, Amazon customer support person, I thought to myself: I really need to better track the promotions I subscribe to.
Here’s a quick background story. I bought Amazon Dash Wand back in January. I never actually wanted an Amazon Dash Wand because I’m not the type of person to buy into the Amazon ecosystem and I need a device that allows me to immediately reorder the items I usually get at my local grocery store. (In most cases, I refuse to pay Amazon extra for AmazonFresh.)
However, I bought Dash Wand because Amazon was doing a promotion for it at the time. Buy a device, then make a purchase with it and you will receive a $ 20 credit. At the time of purchase, the Dash Wand cost $ 15. Boom. Free money for burritos, plus a fancy little device that I can show my friends and pretend to scan them. Hours of pleasure.
Naturally, the stock had an expiration date, but I didn’t really think about it. The day he arrived, I would surely open the Dash Wand box like a kid on [a holiday of your choice], pull all the cans out of my pantry and go to the scanning shopping extravaganza.
Not really.
In fact, I completely forgot that I even had a Dash Wand shortly after I left it dangling in the closet. Of course, I would see this every day, but I would not log the connection that I really needed to use . And I completely forgot about promoting Amazon for several months when I finally remembered to scan and buy an item using Amazon’s magic device. Cat food has arrived; my $ 20 promotion is not.
Amazon was kind enough to provide me with a $ 10 promotional coupon after I confessed to being apathetic (and / or stupid), but this isn’t the first time I’ve been forgetful that has cost me advertising money this year. (I also bought a sample box from Amazon, which will refund the box if I buy a larger version of one of its samples within three months. You can guess how that ended.)
Put promotions in your calendar / reminders / in the app
Even if you’re the laziest shopper (like me), a quick way to keep track of any post-purchase tasks you need to take care of is to simply move the timeline into your favorite life tracking solution . (Consider this the flip side of setting up calendar alerts for the end of free promotions.)
For example, if you know that a promotion (or worse, discounts) has an expiration date, learn how to add it as a calendar event – with one or two reminders. You can keep track of all of these things in a separate “Shopping” calendar so that your main calendar feed doesn’t look overwhelming if you keep on shopping.
It’s even easier if you’re used to working with your digital assistant – Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, Alexa, and more.When you’re about to buy something that requires you to do a side action for a limited time, just tell your assistant. so that he reminds you of this a day before his due date (or maybe even a week before his due date). It takes you less than ten seconds to set up, but you can save a significant portion of the changes depending on the promotion you track.
Do not write these reminders on stickers and stick them to your monitor. Even if you look at them every day, you will forget about them. Believe me. If you are using a physical calendar or day planner – good for you! – put them there instead.
Try to beg for forgiveness
If you miss a promotional coupon, discount, or any other offer because it has expired, you can always try contacting the seller to see if they can help you at all. While they may not be able to provide you with a full promotion, you will be surprised at what they can do for you. A happy customer is a repeat customer, right?