4 Hacks To Help You Score The Best Deals On Black Friday & Cyber Monday

There are many things to love about Black Friday, namely the deals, deals, and, oh yes, more deals. However the massive landscape of sales and seemingly endless emails can get a bit ridiculous, especially given that Black Friday is now more of a month-long marathon and not a single day shopping sprint.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to make sure you get the best deals without feeling completely overwhelmed. Ahead, a few clever tricks that do all the behind-the-scenes work for you so you can sit back, click buy, and wait for your new purchases to arrive, cup of cocoa in hand.

Whether you're looking for all deals on Apple products or just ones on iPads, Google Alerts will help ensure they end up in your mailbox. Head here to set up an alert. In the "create an alert about" bar you can type in a general company name or something more specific, such as "Black Friday iPad sale."

To help filter some of the results Google pulls, tap "show options" before selecting "create alert." In the dropdown menu, you'll be able to select how many results you get, what the sources of those results are (ex. news, blogs, or web), and how often during the day you get alerts. After specifying, tap "create alert" and you're good to go.

For those who don't know what they might want to buy, Flipp might be a better option. The app and website bring all the weekly ads into one place so you can see the doorbuster from Walmart, Best Buy, and Target together. Plus, search for a product keyword (ex. television) and the app will pull in all of the qualifying deals from the ads so you don't have to waste time flipping through them.

It's a blessing and a curse that so many stores offer Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. While the variety is great, it also means more searching for you, since you want to make sure you're getting the best price possible. This year, save yourself some time and effort with PriceBlink.

The free browser extension for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox does all the heavy lifting, automatically scanning over 4,000 retailers for better deals on the product you're looking at. It will show you these comparisons, as well as the shipping costs, so you can make the most informed decision.

If you're shopping in-store, use ShopSavvy (free, App Store and Google Play) which performs a similar task after you scan a product's barcode.

If you've ever searched for promotion codes to enter at checkout, only to find out that the ones you're entering are expired or invalid, the RetailMeNot Genie is your savior. All you need to do is download the free browser extension in Chrome. Then, shop. When you're ready to check out the Genie will automatically test RetailMeNot's curation of coupon codes to figure out which optimizes your savings.

The Genie came out last year and works with major stores and brands such as Ulta, Macy's, J.Crew, and Saks Fifth Avenue. You don't need a RetailMeNot account to use it, but if you set one up or log in with your existing account, you're eligible for cash back offers with the Genie — no magic lamp rubbing required.

With all these helpful tools in hand, you may be thinking about clearing out your inbox. As much as we love knowing about the latest sales, 20+ emails a day starts to really back up our inbox. If you create an account with Unroll.Me, you can save yourself a lot of time without having to unsubscribe from everything. Unroll.Me allows you to unsubscribe in one convenient place, but the real magic is that it will let you condense all your shopping emails into one daily email. It categorizes your subscriptions into easy-to-find sections. So when you want to find the next sale at Urban Outfitters, it's only a couple clicks away.