Keeping Track of Rebates and Promotions (Remember the Milk)
Despite their negative reputation, mail-in rebates and similar promotions have the potential for being very lucrative and rewarding. The key to rebate success is not a secret, although a lot of people certainly have problems following it: pay attention to the details. This includes reading the fine print, following through with all terms and conditions, documenting your submission, and following up — all well covered territory (see “13 Ways to Track Down Wayward Rebates” at MSNBC’s Red Tape Chronicles, for example).
The hard part for me, though, has always been staying on top of promotions once they have been submitted. Invariably every now and then rebates and promotions fail to come through. Regardless of whether you take the optimistic outlook (mistakes happen) or the cynical outlook (companies purposely denying valid rebates hoping you’ll forget), the bottom line is that you will need to often times track and follow-up your rebates and promotions.
Enter “Remember The Milk”
I have recently begun using the web-based (and free) task manager “Remember the Milk” to keep track of things that I need to do. Remember the Milk is essentially a high-tech “To-Do” list, allowing you to keep track of tasks in a simple and fast method; it includes the ability to categorize, tag, and prioritize tasks, set due dates, schedule reminders, and more. Over at Lifehacker, they have pretty much fallen in love with Remember the Milk, and have a very helpful and highly recommended beginners guide to “Get Organized with Remember the Milk.”
Using “RTM” to Manage Rebates and Promotions
Remember the Milk is an amazing task manager, but it can also be particularly useful for staying on top of the details of rebates and promotions. Here’s my system:
- Create a “List” for Rebates and Promotions – In RTM, you can do this by going to Settings, then Lists. Creating a list just for promotions allows you to keep these items separate and isolated.
- As soon as you decide to participate in a rebate or promotion, create a task for the promotion. RTM allows you to include quite a bit of information on the task, so make use of it! I usually include: a title like “$20 – Norton Antivirus Rebate” that describes the reward and from where its coming, the due date for submitting or completing the promotion, and notes with information on the promotion — such as a copy/paste of the rules, a link to the promotion online, or even the file location where I’ve saved a copy of the rules on my computer. For purchases made online, I may include a copy of the receipt as a note.
Any tasks in my “Promotions” list during this stage are meant to help me make sure I complete specific requirements for the promotion. For rebates, this is often a quick process (fill out form, copy receipt, copy UPC code, etc.). This is more useful for complicated promotions, though. For example, Delta Airlines recently had a promotion where they offered bonus miles for every five partner activities, and I used RTM to keep track of my partner activity progress towards the requirements. - Once you complete the promotion, immediately update the task in RTM. For me, this usually means two steps: (1) updating the due date to reflect when I should expect the reward to arrive (such as 8-10 weeks), and (2) adding a note that includes when I submitted the rebate, where I can find supporting documentation (i.e. in my physical “rebates” folder in my desk, or virtual “rebates” folder on my computer), and (most importantly) who I can contact for support.
- Sit back and wait, and watch for any updates. Frequently rebate companies will send you some sort of tracking number for your rebate or updates you on the process — when I get these updates, I immediately add them as a new note to the task in RTM. In this way, each promotion in RTM becomes a sort of mini-portfolio folder including information on when I submitted and any update information I received.
- When you successfully receive a rebate, mark it as completed in RTM.
- The most useful part of RTM is that it will present your promotions in order of their due dates – so you always know what promotions have deadlines coming up or when to expect payment. It also gives you an easy and straightforward way of seeing what rebates and promotions you have outstanding and that need to be followed-up on. When a task becomes overdue, RTM will show it at the top in bold, and you’ll know you need to act.
- If you run into problems with a rebate, you can use the information attached to the task in RTM to follow-up with the rebate or promotion organizer. RTM adds a time stamp to all the notes you add, so you’ll have a clear record of when you sent things, and where you can find supporting documentation. Note: Often times when you follow-up, rebate companies will process your rebate but tell you to expect it to take another month or two — don’t forget to update with the new expected arrival date!
Having used these steps for a few months now, I can say that it has drastically improved both my organization and my promotion yield — I’m batting almost 100% for successful promotions. I should also add that you could use a similar system in Microsoft Outlook or a similar task manager, but Remember the Milk seems to provide a sleek, elegant, and easy-to-use interface.
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