For years retailers have leveraged coupons to drive consumer behavior and increase overall sales. And coupons are not going away; they have successfully transitioned to digital platforms. You will notice that retailers are using online coupons to drive website visits, help to promote specific seasonal products, reinforce the brand loyalty, and when integrated with online viral program, coupons are driving net new customers.
But how can you develop a successful online coupon program for your organization? Successful online coupon programs tend to have certain characteristic; such as being selective or created for a specific target audience. For example, when you setup a coupon be sure to segment a specific target audience by their past behavior such as; previous purchaser of a certain product, look for specific loyalty patterns, focus on abandon shopping cart; or shopper’s frequency/quantity).
Use coupons to target purchaser and to reinforce an existing behavior – “Buy 3 for the price of 2”: You want to send a relevant coupon offer to someone who has purchased a certain product in the past at a specific price point and the coupon should be to increase the quantities purchased or help them to repeat the same past behavior.
Additionally, identify them as a previous purchaser such as; “because you have recently purchased abc product, we would like to offer a matching xyz product at 20% OFF”
Below are 7 Tips for creating successful online coupons campaigns for your holiday season.
1. Reward your current customers and get them to buy more often. Target to retain customers & build loyalty – “Customer Appreciation Day”: Once a month have a customer appreciate day where they can receive and additional 5% off the current 15% off or just say 20% and personalize the coupon. This provides away to ensure that this offer is truly special.
2. Target new visitors and get them into a pattern – “10% off your first purchase” As soon as a person signs up and becomes a member of your database, email them a welcome email and distribute a coupon for 10% toward their first purchase.
3. Limit the duration of the offer – get consumers to react: Message a sense of urgency with the offer to let them know that this is too good to last for ever. The bigger the offer, the shorter the time period to redeem the offer. “25% OFF – OFFER Ends Friday – Hurry!”
4. Learn to manage and control the coupon offers: In general coupons are addictive and over a period of time they can set precedence with the customer behavior. In order not to get abused with coupon usage, we suggest that you tie coupons to a single item, to a certain volume or the number of time the redemption can happen per customer. You also want to change the frequency or specific days of the week when coupons can be redeemed.
5. Many ways to distribute coupons: Online, you have many options for distributing coupons and coupon codes. You can e-mail the coupon to you target list; coupons can be posted on your website for visitors to find, integrate them via the shopping cart, post the coupons on coupon or deal sites; distribute the coupons via blogs. Allow coupons to be “forward to a friend”, utilize search engine marketing with keyword buys on Google and Yahoo and take them to a landing page where they can view/print/email/forward to a friend the coupon. Develop a media campaign with coupon code or distribute in any of the follow up or transaction email communications. This would be a “thank you for your purchase, we appreciate your business. Below is a 10% coupon to you to use on your next purchase”. In general all coupon offers should be designed to be direct, and simple to understand and execute. If you are going to distribute via e-mail, make the e-mail message all about the coupon. For example: “Customer Appreciation Weekend – prints this coupon and bring it to your local store or enter promo code “xyzabc” at the website.
6. Viral marketing to promote the coupon program: Coupon promotions offer true money value to consumers, they’re a clear choice for viral marketing. Blogs and social networks today have shown us the complex social relationships consumers have on the web. One person discovers a new deal at a trusted site, and there’s a coupon built right into the site info, that person will likely tell friends about both the site and the coupon. The same is true about email marketing campaigns that include coupons, or the discovery of savings on sites. For example, to increase customer registrations to its email marketing database, you could reward existing customers with coupons. The market research suggest that redemption rate among new customers referred to a program by friends has a high redemption rate.
7. On-site support of the coupon program: On your website, you should have a method for easily supporting the coupon either by an entry field during their on site visit or integrated into a personalized URL as part of their session. Or you may want to set up individual landing pages for each coupon campaign to drive conversions. Constantly remind them to take advantage of the coupon and profile how to apply the coupon. “With the coupon you would save $50; click here to find out how.” Share this coupon with a friend via the website tools.
Large discount coupons can be addictive if used too often and too freely; reward your best customers and use it to get them to buy more and more frequently. Do not target the individual but rather the behavior. Set the coupon so that its can used once, for a specific items ONLY and for a very short time period. Utilize coupons to acquire new customers and be sure to have a less discount offer (i.e.: 10% -15%), allow it to be distributed on deal sites, to friends in a viral method and always identify them from the source that you acquired them from.
Best of Luck!