Be there before you travel!

Very often, there seems to be hesitation to register or provide email address to try out a new app or software. The reluctance is very much understandable and many times the common reason to shy away from registering is obligation and "strings" associated.
This day and age, given the competition and technology, as long as the app does not provide a ways to explore the tool and let the users experience their "aha" moments as quickly and early as possible without users having to fill in any information or registering, there is a very high probability that the app is rejected in no time.

Keeping this in mind, EzCouponTracker has introduced a guest login where the users are able to explore the  app and browse all the features with out having to give any information. This enables the users to not only explore the app but also test it out to see if this is the right tool for them.

We have certainly noticed that there is a huge spike in our registration count as a result of this. This is because of two reasons: 1. We don't impose the registration onto the users which gives them a liberty to try and explore the app. 2. The guest login, although, restricts the users from performing certain actions, will still let them experience their aha moments in no time.

We are happy to introduce this new change which gives all our users a chance to explore the tool.

Best regards,
EzCouponTracker team!

E-mail coupons!!!! They save more money when you........

Stores do different promotions in different days, we can classify them into 4 categories:

1.  Weekend
2.   Mid-week
3.  Special days
4.   Late night

Weekend falls from Friday – Monday

Midweek falls from Tuesday – Thursday

Special days are festivals, holidays etc.,

Late night are mostly during working days after 10 PM EST.

Which one of these categories provide most valuable deals?

Here is the order based highest value to lowest value:

Late night:

If you are online shopper, these coupons/deals provide more value. These are ONLINE Only deals and most of the times valid between 10 PM EST – 3 AM EST. Based on data we have, these coupons/deals are on average 15% higher than regular deals.

We have observed that there is consistent increase in stores opting for promoting late night deals to increase their online sales. These are sort of FLASH sales, so you need to keep an eye on your emails around late evening to get advantage with these deals.

Special days

Second most valuable option is Special days. Most of the stores run special promotions/deals on these days to increase their sales. Though these deals available very few times in a year, saving values are at least 10% higher comparing with all other deal types.  RECOMMENDED........

Mid-week

Third most valuable option is mid-week promotions. These promotions hold little bit higher value comparing with weekend promotions. One advantage with mid-week promotions are, there are applicable for both online/in-store purchases. Consumers who want to experience in-store setting could get advantage with these sales. We observed that promotions during mid-week contains valuable coupons for “special items”.

Weekend promotions

Even though these promotions does contain valuable coupons, we have observed that most of the times these coupons are either attached to “certain amount of purchase” (or) “sale items only” conditions. If you are looking for purchases in these categories then lookout for weekend promotions to get value.

Note that few stores may use mix-match of these promotions to get more value. By using tools like EzCouponTrakcer, you can easily manage/organize all these promotions and save time, money. Why wait, signup with EzCouponTracker and have a frugal shopping.

Helping the Small Business

Generally speaking, small business retail owners struggle to market their products given that they have limited budget and resource constraints.

During my interview last week with one small business owner who runs a bakery, I have found out several things they struggle with. Without any doubt, I can proudly say that EzCouponTracker can assist them with at least some of their marketing needs, if not all.
For instance, they can use EzCouponTracker to post several coupons and promotions publicly, which EzCouponTracker users can browse and redeem. This clearly seems to benefit the business as they are able to promote their business for free of cost.

Also, the small businesses can partner with us. They are several ways we can help them, for example, we can run some diagnostics on what other similar business are blooming in the neighborhood based on the coupon usage. This study not only helps them in understanding where they stand in the market but also market trends.

Given that we are small business ourselves, we are willing to work with other small businesses, whether that means we need to adjust our software, add more modules and/or change some of our current processes to integrate with them. We are open to suggestions and ideas, together we can certainly make a difference.

Making coupons public using EzCouponTracker is a very simple and straightforward process. Once you sign up, go to "Add coupon" under "Manage Coupons" module to add a coupon. It immediately shows up in your "My Coupons", then select the coupon and click on Public to make it available to everyone.

Why wait? Login into EzCouponTracker and promote your business. If you are a small business and have questions on how to use EzCouponTracker, please don't hesitate to write to us at support at ezcoupontracker.com .

Best wishes from,
EzCouponTracker team.

Email: Support@EzCouponTracker.com

Don't ignore "dollar bills" in your email!

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”–Thomas Edison

As Thomas Edison said, most of the shoppers miss opportunities to save money on their shopping bill by ignoring "dollar bills" they have in their email.

“Dollar bills” in email? You might be thinking we are crazy, here is another quote from one of our friend, who is effective coupon user (and business man). 

“Every coupon is like a dollar bill, do you trash dollar bills? NO. Then you shouldn’t ignore coupons, use them properly to save money”.

Most of the emails we receive in our inbox does contain coupons, but unfortunate part is going through these emails “looks like work” and we ignore them, hence we are missing opportunity to save. How can we solve this? Well, before jumping onto solution, let us try to understand few details about these emails:

A promotional (email) from store can be categorized into one of the following:

1) Coupon
      Definition: In marketing, a coupon is a ticket or document that can be exchanged for a financial discount or  rebate when purchasing a product.
       For example: 25% off on jewelry at JCPenny with code SAVE25

2) Sale
      Definition: An event or occasion during which a business sells goods or services at price that are lower than usual.     
       For example: Traders Joe: Bananas are $2 today sale (was $3 )
       No coupon code required. 

3) Promotion (or) information
      Definition: Promotion refers to raising customer awareness of a product or brand, generating sales, and creating brand loyalty.
     For example: New summer styles available at Macys. 
     This is pure promotional material to provide information about what is new.

Does it make sense to ignore store emails?

It depends on what you mean by "promotion", if you mean item 3 from above list, answer could be yes, BUT remember 80% of emails will fall into either 1 (or) 2. 

EzCouponTracker team observed that average value of Coupon/Sale email is 30%, by effectively using promotional emails shoppers can save average 30% on their bill (when we convert this into dollar bills, average $30 per $100).

Now let us discuss about what we can do to uncover ““looks like work” and make this process simple.
 1) Separating “information” email from “coupons” 
 2) Sorting “coupon” emails based on expiry date 
 3) Nice summary about coupon (which helps us quickly decide whether coupon is useful or not). 

EzCouponTracker does exactly these steps to reduce your work on managing/organizing “coupon emails”. Now that you have solution, why ignore “dollar bills” in your email, have them help you in your savings.

 Picture crtsy: http://www.greenstep.com/content/opportunity-overview

Receipt management made easy with EzCouponTracker

Recently I went shopping with my wife to an outlet mall in Virginia.  It was holiday season and we got a ton of clothes for everyone in our family. I have to admit that I have very poor organizing skills and needless to say none of receipts that were part of this purchase were kept in a secure place. 
Three weeks later, we realize that some of the clothes that we had purchased for my three-year-old does not fit her anymore. So what am I supposed to do now - maybe take the clothes back to the store for a return or exchange. Right!! 
There comes the challenge of finding these receipts. As is, life is so busy managing two jobs and two kids, organizing and keeping track of these kind of petty things is going to be a Herculean task. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who had gone through this typical situation. So we ended up giving anyway these clothes to charity and other friends. Imagine going through this exercise every two to three months because you cannot find receipts? 

Then, we as founders of EzCouponTracker decided to come up with a solution for this. Since we are already efficiently tracking and organizing the coupons for the users, we thought we can certainly come up with an additional module which can store receipts from the shopping. It was indeed the best addition we could have made to our product as it certainly made our product complete with the whole purchase cycle. You can easily search your receipt based on store name or the description you added while storing the receipt.
We currently save your receipts and enable users to enter description and date of purchase. We retain your receipts for 3 months from the date of upload.

EzCouponTracker - a complete management tool for your shopping right from finding coupons until storing your receipts from purchase. 

Best regards,
Co-founder - EzCouponTracker

Holiday season can indeed be stress free!!

Holidays season is here - which means, Christmas trees, lights, decorations, travel plans, presents, gifts, chocolates, toys and the list goes on. Oh boy, as much as fun it sounds like, it is indeed a stressful deal. Organizing all these laundry list of tasks itself is a big assignment as one cannot afford to forget anything or anyone as it might lead of a lot of misunderstandings.

Shopping is major task during holiday season. Searching for deals and coupons on gifts to save some money is indeed a stressful process. Wouldn't it be helpful if one can get a helping hand during such an important season of the year? Why not! Certainly an app like EzCouponTracker will have its share of benefits assisting you at every stage of your shopping - right from planning stage of your shopping ( by creating coupon requests ahead of time) until the day of shopping by making the coupons available at your finger tips.

With the numerous collection of coupons (yes we use 'crowd sourcing' concepts to pool coupons at one place), your shopping experience will certainly be delightful and you will definitely have a wider choice to shop.

EzCouponTracker currently has a full fledged Web and Android app and our Apple app is only a couple of weeks away from deployment. Our app is currently available for free.

I conclude by wishing you happy holidays - hope you will have a fun filled and stress free holiday season.

Best wishes from,

EzCoupon Tracker team


 Picture crtsy: http://i.marketingprofs.com/assets/images/articles/lg/131022-happy-woman-holiday-shopping-lg.jpg

How to be organized and save more?

Recently, I started noticing that every shopping site has a "subscribe to our coupons and promotions" section and I very often hear and notice that my friends and family are really hesitant to give their personal email address not knowing what happens to it after they click on subscribe button.

In the process, a lot of savings are being sacrificed while the customers who subscribe to these coupons do receive good deals from time to time. Another challenge is when these coupons are sent to the customers and how they manage them to have them available at their finger tips when they need them most.

EzCouponTracker has a solution to the above problem. Here is how:

When you sign up with EzCouponTracker, you will be assigned a dedicated email address which we encourage you to share with all the stores and shopping websites to receive their coupons and promotions. It gets only better now, as we separate coupons and promotions while organizing them based on the expiry date making them available for your at your finger tips when you are out for shopping.

While these features have proven to be very handy for all the coupon users, we went an extra step and came up with several other features. Listing a couple of other features 

:

- Requesting coupons within the user community.

- Importing coupons from your personal email accounts.

- Sharing coupons with other users by marking them as public 

AND, in the process you would achieve the following:
- Save enormous amount of time and energy.
- Never miss a coupon you already own as they are all available on your finger tips.
- Peace of mind, because you are not sharing your personal email with anyone.

I would finally conclude by saying - Save time and money while protecting your privacy with EzCouponTracker. Sign up and start saving right away.

EzCouponTracker team