Alex Papaconstantinou is the founder of Wikigains.com, a coupon website that represents over 3,000 online stores in the United Kingdom. In this article he explains how a smart coupon strategy can help an online business, not only increase revenue, but track sales, support affiliates and increase the client base.
Though, in recent years, some retailers have opted out of coupon marketing, we’ll see here 5 reasons why online shops should consider publishing discount coupon codes.
1. Reward loyalty
Giving existing customers coupon codes goes a long way towards rewarding loyalty to your brand. You can email them something like “We appreciate your loyalty so much that we would like to give you $30 off your next purchase. Thanks for your business”.
2. Measure return on investment (ROI)
Tracking your marketing campaigns is very important as it gives you a clear picture of which marketing channels are creating more sales for your online business. Using coupon codes is a great way to track sales from various media.
Use a different code for every platform you promote your product, i.e. have different codes for Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Youtube ,etc. Tracking the offer codes used and linking them to the sales they generated will help you calculate the number of sales produced by each marketing channel.
With a little bit of technology, you can also use coupon codes to track keyword level of your search ad campaign which is important when it comes to optimization.
3. Personally reward followers on special occasions
Instead of offering coupons to everyone, sometimes it is best to only reward certain customers. For example, try send a special voucher code to people on their birthdays! This gives a person a lot of joy on their birthday, knowing that you thought of them. It also establishes your company as a user-friendly brand.
4. Retargeting and shopping cart dropouts
Shopping cart dropout occurs when a potential customer visits an ecommerce site, selects a product, fills in their details including the email address but, for some reason, the customer leaves the website without completing the order. In this case, you can use a coupon code to lure the buyer back to the website.
What about sending them an email with a promotional code that reads something like this, “Hi, I am Alex from thisretailstore.com, we noticed you left our website without completing your order. Here is a 20% off coupon code for your next purchase. Use it now as it it’s valid for a day only”.
5. Promote scarcity
In order to make buyers take action quickly when it comes to making a purchase, you can use limited time offer codes. This creates scarcity and drives the potential buyers, who maybe on the fence, to take action.
There are many ways you can leverage coupon codes to track customers, increase sales, build customer loyalty and more. But always remember that in order to build a sustainable business, you must never make a money off policy your only marketing strategy.
