Coupon Marketing: Definition and Strategies to Implement

Coupon marketing helps businesses bring in customers by offering special deals and discounts. Ultimately, it’s a win-win for everyone because clients save money, and companies increase loyalty and sales.

Overall, coupon codes are sophisticated marketing tools that help you drive sales and build a better brand image. Using a more modern infrastructure, coupon campaigns can enable you to track data and improve your marketing efforts. 

Roughly 90 percent of all consumers use coupons when available. Today, you will learn what coupon marketing is, its benefits, strategies to consider, and more. Let’s dive in!

Definition of Coupon Marketing

Marketing your business effectively takes time and effort. You want to reduce costs wherever possible, and coupon marketing can help you do this. This tactic brings in customers by offering discounts. Customers want to save money, and companies can increase sales.

Coupons come in various forms, but digital codes are often the best solution. Plus, they can be used for many products and services. Likewise, you can personalize the coupons or have specific rules in place to redeem them. The easiest way to do that is through plugins.

Benefits of Coupon Marketing

Consider these benefits of having a coupon marketing strategy:

• Accomplish Sales Goals Quickly – Coupons are used as incentives and get customers to perform the action you want, which will help you achieve more sales. For example, you can break even with products that don’t sell well or upsell more.
• Beat the Competition – It’s important to know how to improve your customer’s shopping experience at your store, but you’re probably in line with other similar brands. Coupon marketing can help you make attractive offers and become more popular in the eCommerce environment.
• Grow Your User Base – Coupons will boost loyalty, but they also increase the chance of customers telling others about your brand. People will respond emotionally when you reach out and thank them.
• Track Success – You’ll need an analytics software solution to help you track customer preferences and success. This can tie into your coupon plugin to make it easier to measure ROI. People will redeem the codes online, and you will know where they found your company.

Key Strategies for Implementing Coupon Marketing

If you wish to optimize your coupon marketing strategies, you’ll primarily need to wait and see. Trial and error is the most important part because it will show you what works in the long run. This is why tracking is so important. Here are a few other tips:

• Try Small Campaign Experiments – If you do a test run with a smaller segment, it can help you see which strategies are more effective. This means you’re not offering the discount for too long or making it too large. In the beginning, you’ll use more diversified parameters, such as the type, discount value, and duration. These small campaigns will take time to implement, so be patient and plan for various experiments to learn what works for you.
• Run Various A/B Tests – This is a more complicated strategy because it requires specific software that shows various campaigns and how different people react. However, you see straightforward results, which are more reliable than launching multiple experiments.
• Use Single-use Coupons – Each coupon you offer needs a special identifying code. The standard way is to create one set of generic codes for each coupon. There are risks involved here. If the code is online, countless people will get the discount when you only wanted a handful of clients to receive it. Therefore, a coupon plugin is ideal because it lets you customize the code and offer for each person/email.
• Create Urgency – The fear of missing out (FOMO) is real for most consumers. If you offer a coupon that’s good for six months, you can expect many to wait until the end of the promotional period. Therefore, you want coupons that expire within a few days to get people to buy, even if they might not need the item yet.
• Use Gamification – People love games because they’re fun and usually come with a reward. There are many ways to use gamification for coupon marketing. Just make sure you have consistent rules to avoid problems.

Best Practices in Coupon Marketing 

If you’re thinking of marketing and using coupons, it’s important to know the best practices. Here are a few things to consider:

• Many Campaign Types – Though you will likely use coupon plugins to generate and track coupon use, it should also work for popups and other features. 
• Advanced Customization Features – You’ll need to create campaign rules, customer segmentation, and limits based on specific data. Once you’ve connected your data sources, you’ll see more personalization.
• CRM Integration – It’s wise to ensure the plugins you use will integrate with each other. That means the customer data on your customer management system will be easy to see from the plugin menu.
• Various Ways to Send Coupons – Many people use mobile devices, so you want to optimize your site for mobile. However, you also have to think about email marketing, live chat, and everything else.
• Segmentation – It’s essential to create customer segments to target your promotions effectively. The goal is to boost customer loyalty effortlessly.
• Campaign Limits – You need a way to set up who’s eligible for the promotions and when. Get creative and use the flexibility of coupon plugins to create rules based on redemption history, audience, customer location/device, budget, and more.
• Tracking and Reporting – Giving discounts without knowing how effective they are is dangerous. You want to ensure that people are using the codes, but it’s also nice to track how often they shop with you. Loyalty matters as a business owner, and it’s up to you to provide coupons without causing people to wait until the next sale to buy.

Challenges and Considerations

Though coupon marketing is beneficial in many ways, there are some challenges and considerations. These include:

• Potential Brand Damage – If you constantly send discounts, people will associate your brand as being cheap or less desirable, which can hurt you.
• Shopping Cart Abandonment – There are ways you can prevent cart abandonment altogether, but offering coupons could be another issue to consider. Customers often see the coupon box during the checkout session, so they might leave to find a great deal. You’ll need a cart abandonment email or popup to offset that.
• Fewer Loyal Customers – Typically, price-driven shoppers aren’t in your target group. Therefore, you’ll see fewer repeat sales and might spend more to get new customers in all the time. Likewise, discounting regularly will cause customers to wait until they know the price will be lower.

Why Use Coupon X to Create Coupon Codes?

Coupon X is a great option and will help you create coupon codes with ease. There are different packages available, but the Basic one is ideal for one website. You’ll get:

• A countdown timer
• Popup templates
• Unlimited widgets
• Page targeting
• Cart/order history targeting
• Much more

Ultimately, Coupon X is a popup builder that’s easy to use. You won’t need to learn coding. Plus, you can customize the coupons to meet your needs, which will likely boost email subscriptions and sales in your eCommerce store. 

Targeting is crucial, and Coupon X offers more powerful targeting features. This means you can get leads, engaging with them based on cart items, location, order history, and much more.

There is even a free plan to help you see if Coupon X is right for you. With it, you will get:

• Many ways to generate coupons
• Various customization options
• Coupon analytics
• Access to create slide-in popups
• One widget for all coupons

If you upgrade to the Pro plan, you’ll see these benefits:

• Everything from the Free version
• Page targeting
• Unlimited widgets
• Much more

Conclusion

Coupon marketing is something every eCommerce store should be doing. If you own an online business, selling is likely your main goal. Today, you learned what coupon marketing is, why it’s important, its benefits, and key strategies to help you implement it in your business.

As with everything in life, there are challenges to overcome and a few drawbacks to consider. However, coupon marketing is an ideal solution for many. Get started with Coupon X today!