The Temptation of Discounts and the Biggest Time Suck for Business Owners!

You all know I am the ‘No Discount’ Queen of the Lifestyle Management industry. Just say no. No matter what. But, like all human beings, I too am tempted by an easy discount. 

Unfortunately, this discount can lead to a huge waste of time for everyone, but especially for us as small business owners because we have the luxury of self-managing our work day.

In an era where online shopping reigns supreme, it’s no secret that retailers employ various tactics to entice customers to make purchases. One common strategy is offering discounts or special offers in exchange for signing up for email promotions.

While the allure of saving money may be enticing at first glance, the unintended consequence of this practice is the inundation of promotional emails that can quickly overwhelm your inbox.

Let’s explore the journey from the initial temptation of discounts to the eventual takeover of your inbox and I will provide tips for managing email overload without sacrificing savings.

It all begins innocently enough. You’re browsing an online store, adding items to your cart, when a pop-up appears offering a tempting discount if you sign up for their email newsletter. “Why not?” you think to yourself. After all, who doesn’t love saving money? With a few keystrokes, you eagerly enter your email address and complete your purchase, feeling a sense of satisfaction at snagging a deal.

Little do you realize that by agreeing to receive promotional emails, you’ve unwittingly opened the floodgates to a deluge of marketing messages. In the days and weeks that follow, your inbox becomes inundated with a seemingly endless stream of emails—special offers, sales alerts, product recommendations, and more—all vying for your attention and tempting you to make additional purchases.

Before long, your inbox begins to resemble a battlefield, with promotional emails waging war for supremacy. Amidst the chaos, important messages from colleagues, clients, or loved ones are buried beneath a mountain of marketing missives. Your once sacred sanctuary for communication has been infiltrated and overrun by relentless promotions, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.

And at this point, I must embarrassingly admit this happened to me. Every few hours, I found myself facing at least 300 emails in my inbox and as many as 500+. It would take several hours to clean through them; mostly because as a self-proclaimed professional online addict er, shopper, the flashy ads promising even more discounts would grab my attention and I’d have to ‘just take a look’. FOMO at its best!

Eventually, I found myself missing vendor quotes and other time sensitive communications. I was wasting a good 4 hours per day and ultimately, it got so bad, I looked at my inbox with dread. It was bad. Seriously bad.

That’s when I realized, it was time to make a drastic change.

So, how can you reclaim control over your inbox without sacrificing the savings that initially lured you into this predicament? Here are three tips to help you navigate the deluge of promotional emails:

1. Unsubscribe Strategically: Take stock of the promotional emails cluttering your inbox and unsubscribe from newsletters that no longer serve your interests or provide value. Be ruthless in cutting ties with brands that bombard you with irrelevant messages.
2. Use Pinterest: For those emails I really want to look at for shopping, I go to the website and ‘save’ that site to Pinterest. That way, I know I can find it again without receiving repeat marketing emails. And it cures FOMO too, because I know those products are saved to a place where I can find them again when I’m ready to shop.
3. Create Filters and Folders: Use email filters and folders to automatically categorize incoming messages from retailers. This allows you to maintain a clutter-free inbox while keeping promotional emails accessible for when you’re in the mood to shop. I do this with Pinterest emails.

If you use Pinterest, you know they send multiple emails per day with ideas for things which you’ve already expressed interest. These emails can become a rabbit hole. I love crafting and cannot resist a Pinterest recommendation for a new craft technique. If I let myself, I can spend hours on just these emails.

So they are automatically diverted into a folder for Pinterest specifically and when I do have time to Pinterest surf, I know right were to go.

Some people recommend setting boundaries and only checking your email at specific times throughout the day. That won’t work for me (and likely not you) as we need to be responsive to the needs of clients and we need to process quotes quickly as well.

The final recommendation popular these days to reduce email is to opt for alternative communication channels such as texting or alerts. To me, these are just as invasive as excessive emails (and I’m not a texter) so this isn’t a viable option for me.

After spending a day posting sites to Pinterest and unsubscribing from all those emails, I now only receive 75-100 emails – mostly internal communications – even if I’m away from my inbox for several hours.

Honestly, it feels like a weight has been lifted. I don’t think we truly realize how much of a time suck or how oppressive it is to have to manage so many emails. I sure didn’t.

While the allure of discounts may be irresistible, the unintended consequence of signing up for email newsletters is the inundation of promotional messages that can quickly overwhelm your inbox and thus you.

By recognizing the signs of email overload and implementing strategies for managing promotional emails effectively, you can strike a balance between saving money and maintaining control over your digital domain. After all, a clutter-free inbox is the ultimate discount for your peace of mind.