I wrote a guest post on Consumerism Commentary titled “How to Spend Smarter this Holiday Season.” One of the ideas I mentioned was creating a “sale mail” email account. I got a ton of responses about the idea so I wanted to share it with you. I have been using a separate folder in my personal gmail account, but thought I should follow my own advice.
In 3 easy steps you can have a sale email account. The benefits to this are:
- all your sale info is in one spot, it’s easy to find
- you can keep yourself from purchasing impulse buys when you get your emails by creating a passive barrier
- you never miss a sale email
1. Sign up for a new email account.
Signing up for an account is easy, you just need to choose a name, password, security ?, and link it to another email account in case you forget your username or password.
I chose kellysalemail which was open.
2. Set up filters.
I like gmail since they make it easy to set up new accounts, delete bulk emails, and use filters. I personally don’t use the filters a ton, but you could set up one for each category: Home, Kids, Women’s, Men’s, etc. Or you could use one filter or tag for each place you shop: Pottery Barn, Rue La La, Nordstom’s, etc.
3. Get emails!
After your account is set up you can go to your favorite sites, and add the new email address. I went to my new favorite sale sites like Gilt, Rue La La* (click on the link for a $10 credit!), and HauteLook and changed my email. I also signed up for emails from my favorite stores.
Over the next month whenever I get a sale email they go into a folder in my personal account, and I can click on the links at the bottom of the newsletters or sale emails and change my email in the preferences on the site. I have had 2 sites already have no option to change my email address (or at least it wasn’t obvious) so I just deleted my account, and then signed up with my new email address.
For now my inbox is empty, but as it starts to fill up I may start putting other filters or labels on emails. Typically I would check it once a week (like I do with my folder in my personal account) and delete old emails with one swipe. Just choose them all and delete, since many of the offers will have expired.
Hopefully this tip will keep more money in your pocket by decreasing impulse buys, and letting you look for relevant discounts and sales.
Do you have a sale mail account? Will you set one up?
Kelly
* If you click on the link for Rue La La, I get a $10 credit, and so do you! 
© 2009, Whalen Media LLC. All rights reserved. To repost or publish, please email Kelly.
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