What makes a good coupon offer

Businesses offer coupons to increase the value proposition of their products in the eyes of consumers. The value proposition of a product or service can be altered in many different ways. But coupons alter the value proposition in relation to cost. Using different coupon formats, businesses can tailor their coupon campaigns to achieve specific objectives. So, there are a few different ways you can set up coupons to alter your value proposition to customers.

But how do customers exchange their coupons? There's also a variety of popular redemption methods which have their own positives in different contexts. The most common distinctions are:. These are coupons that are made available to anyone. Businesses usually distribute them as coupon ads via public channels, like the front page of their website or newspapers, for example. For example, public coupons can often only be used once per customer.

Because these coupons are available for anyone to use, they usually offer smaller discounts than more targeted personal coupons. Unlike public coupons, personal coupons are distributed to customers individually via private channels, like emails or in-app notifications. Prize coupons are less common than public or personal coupons. This process can either be random or based upon some gamification mechanism.

Understanding how each of these small coupon features can be used to tailor the promotion in favour of the business or customers is vital. This way you can customize your own promotions to give specific results much more easily.

Remember, each of the 8 examples of coupon advertising campaigns below are applicable in specific situations. When a customer first visits your website, offer them a welcome coupon with a small discount on their first order.

You can either make the coupon appear in a pop-up, or send it in an email after the customer enters their email address. Creating a memorable first interaction with new customers helps you build brand loyalty.

Incentivizing a purchase with a discount also increases the likelihood of a sale. You can customize these coupons by location if needed. Boost site traffic and sales with a hour flash sale. You can time the sale around specific events and offer free shipping to increase the incentive. Adding a clear time limit to your flash sale gives a sense of urgency that will encourage your customers to shop.

Offering free shipping is another popular and effective way to incentivize purchases. While free shipping has always been an effective incentive, customers increasingly expect it as standard. This trend has been fuelled by companies like Amazon offering free shipping as standard with services like Amazon Prime.

Free shipping is by no means a must-have, but you should at least consider swallowing some of the cost to increase the attractiveness of your deals. Drive awareness of a new product with a new product coupon. This coupon could offer a time-limited discount on your new product. You can also link it with wider marketing campaigns around the new product launch.

However, if you use unique promo codes, you can bring that sense of urgency even closer. For example, you could set a minute time limit for each coupon code, starting from the moment the email is opened. Urgency marketing brings the added benefit of building value into the proposition. These types of promotions are a particularly good way to get customers off the fence — for example, email marketing campaigns designed to limit shopping cart abandonment.

We love to play games. We love the simplicity that they represent. If only life were that simple, eh? Still, if you can make the act of shopping into a game, you may well find that it results in a dramatic uptick in user engagement.

Gamification builds value in the shopping experience and by extension builds faith in your brand. There are lots of fun ways in which you can incorporate gamification into your coupon marketing strategy.

But make sure that the rules of the game are consistent, whatever they may be. A simple gamification technique you can start to implement straight away is mystery rewards. These are discounts of unknown quantity rewarded to customers for completing certain actions like clicking through on an email link. There are two things that make mystery rewards great. First, people just want to know the answer to the mystery.

A desire to solve that mystery will deliver an increase in the clickthrough rate of your email campaign. Second, you will get some of the eye-catching power of offering a great promotion e. With the right tool, an algorithm can control this, giving out varying discount amounts to deliver your targeted overall discount for the promotion.

Diminishing discounts also lend themselves very well to gamification. This is a great way to motivate buyer behaviour through gamification. We all love to collect nice things. So why not make a game of it? For example, select 5 items from your inventory that share a common theme. Customers will enjoy playing the game and their reward will always mean a sale for you. Ask yourself questions like what kinds of products do repeat customers buy the most and what types of rewards do they use the most—percentage discounts or dollar savings.

Next, segment your customers into groups, so you can create specific programs and messaging for particular types of customers. Create a rewards program that lets each segment accumulate rewards, points, etc. This way, as customers spend more, they unlock more rewards:. Also, consider incorporating artificial advancement in your tiered rewards.

For example, use Rich Media Messaging to share discounts since the open rate for texts is even higher than emails. There are billions of users across popular social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, so your strategy should include sharing discounts regularly.

This amount of exposure is bound to get you noticed and attract many different types of customers. Be mindful of overusing coupons. If your products are always on sale, they start to feel less valuable, and your lead magnets feel more like a marketing ploy just to get emails or more followers.

Plan your discounts around special events, customer anniversaries, or holidays. These are times when customers are inclined to shop more anyway, and it makes sense to target them across different channels. At their core, coupons are basically a request for customers to buy something. As a result, coupon codes can easily be sent as plain text messages.

Customers appreciate attractive visuals, so use your discount offer to incorporate eye-catching graphics, colors, and text. After all, you want your offer to get customers excited, right? Take this email campaign for Sephora.

Use the same concept to share your special offers. The main purpose of coupons is to draw in new customers who use coupons and buy other items. And, hopefully, they will be customers who will return to your business even on days when they do not have coupons in hand.

Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products.