Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Sale Day Alert: Use Technology to Save Money

What if you are in a big city where shops abound and you can’t keep tabs on all those sale days that you’re dying to take advantage of? How do you make sure that you don’t get left unnotified?

Here are some ways that can help you stay informed whenever your favorite stores announce sale or discount days:

Email Alerts
Stores are now learning to market their goods and services via email. You can opt for sale day alerts through typing in your e-mail to their sites’ email alert page.

SMS Alerts
A wide variety of shops are now getting more and more comfortable with the use of technology, specifically with the mobile technology on making their business grow. As a marketing tool, cellular phones are now used to alert customers of any announcements these technology savvy shops have to communicate. Usually, customers or clients are given certain keywords and numbers to get registered or to subscribe to any alerts.

RSS Feeds
Customers that are familiar with the Internet technology can also be notified of any rummage sales, garage sales or discount days using this web tool – RSS. RSS stands for really simple syndication. It is the use of RSS readers or news aggregators to help people compile the list of websites they like to keep updated with.

How do you use RSS feeds to get sale alerts? Here are the steps to learn how to use the RSS technology.

1. Sign up for an RSS reader. RSS readers or news aggregators are like machines that will be your repository of the news feeds or alerting devices of all the websites you want to keep on reading without visiting those sites every so often. The most popular RSS readers are Bloglines and Google Reader.

2. Start collecting RSS feeds. There are a couple of ways to gather RSS feeds. Go to a website, specifically, your favorite shop’s website. Then, look for an orange block with white arcs inside, which is the universal symbol for RSS feeds. Click that graphic and you will be lead to a page to help you subscribe. Choose the reader which you use and that site’s feed will get added to your list of sites that you subscribe to on your RSS reader. Just repeat that procedure when you discover the other web sites that you want to be informed about whenever they get updated.

3. Read the feeds whenever updates are posted on your reader. That way you will only go to the site if there’s something new or if there’s a sale day that’s announced. Less hassle.