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I am not one of President Bush’s biggest fans but he is working hard to get on my good side with an idea that will unfold this week. The tax-rebate checks are starting to be delivered today. The amounts will range from $300 to $1200, but the best part is the President of The United States told us to go out and spend it. He didn’t say save it. He didn’t say invest it. He didn’t say pay down your credit cards. He said SPEND IT!

There is no need to send the President a thank you note but the question is what are YOU going to do to have the tax paying and now rebate citizens of the United States of America to spend their rebate at YOUR store? If you hadn’t given this much thought let me point out a few facts.

If you have a mailing list of 1000 customers, which is not a lot for someone in business awhile and the average rebate per customer is $500 which would be considered a fair average, that means your list alone has the buying potential $500,000. That is a half a million dollars. Now think about stores with mailing lists of 10 or 20 thousand? This is the Opportunity of The Decade.

That’s why all of the Big Chain Stores are planning their promotions and are as ready as a Mall the day after Thanksgiving. Sears is giving an additional 10% if someone buys a gift card for $300 making it $330. Staples is offering rebates of $50 for purchases of $500 or more and $150 for purchases over $1,000. Home Depot is taking a different approach and will be encouraging its customers to buy energy efficient products. (Sort of making it the gift that will keep on giving.) Wal-Mart is having a special press announcement to unveil their plans.

Now the question is what are you going to do to get some of that money?  Remember, we can’t be passive any more. We must be proactive to have customers walking through our front door. We can do things as simple as planning a Rebate Party and celebrating with some super deals.  We could just have fun with it and put up signs and inform our customers that we are a Rebate Redemption Center. We could offer a special gift card of $50 for anyone spending their entire rebate in our store. Of course you could call the customers who spend their whole rebate in your stores The Economy Builders or something more clever than that.

Right about now, you are probably saying that you hadn’t thought about the whole rebate thing. I hadn’t either and frankly I don’t have a lot of ideas to take advantage of this unique opportunity. Actually, very few of us have ever had this type of opportunity before, so there aren’t too many proven promotions to fall back on.  Because of that, I want to use this forum as an idea exchange for this rare opportunity. You people have NEVER disappointed me when it comes to ideas, creativity, and resourcefulness.

As opposed to waiting until next week for the results, I am instructing my Web Master to create a page where you can log on your ideas and see them posted immediately. I am doing it this way because the first checks go out on April 29th. Just to make it a little more interesting, I will give the top 5 ideas $100 credits for any of my products.  This could be a powerful resource for all of us. You can submit your ideas here:

http://www.RickSegel.com/Rebate/index.asp

One last comment: This column is delivered to over 20 countries so I am asking you for your experience in situations such as this. Maybe your country has done something similar and I would love your input.

Have a great week and ask yourself one last question: how are you going to spend your rebate check? Help the economy and spend that money. After all, the President told us to do that. I think I’m going to buy a …. I’m not sure yet. I’m just waiting for a sharp retailer to entice me with something I just can’t live without. Have fun with this one!