Does My Business Need Coupons?

Coupons have already become sophisticated marketing tools, which not only drive sales, but also help in building brand image and customer loyalty. By using a modern infrastructure, coupon campaigns are also a source of tracking data for CRM, used to build and continuously improve your marketing efforts in general.

Do you need coupons? The answer is not up to your business model, market branch, or even your scale. Coupons can help almost every business type and size, if only a strategy is well thought through and planned accordingly to the current budget and clear marketing goals. The way you run coupon campaigns must be consistent with the way your marketing department works.

Benefits of Coupon Marketing

We are all consumers of various goods. I am sure that it's pretty exciting to find a good deal on a product that you want and need. I also believe that finding a bargain creates positive associations with the brand that offered you this item at a discounted price.
From the customer's point of view, receiving a discount is objectively a positive experience, but what about a business?

Here are some benefits that come with a well-planned coupon marketing strategy:

• Accomplish your sales goals faster : coupons can be effectively used as incentives for customers to perform specific actions that help in achieving sales and marketing objectives. For instance, coupons can help you break even with items that just do not sell well on their own and to up-sell your offering.
• Grow your customer base : coupon do not only impact the loyalty of your customers, but also increase the likelihood that they will refer your brand to friends and family more often. Why? it goes without saying that people respond emotionally to brands that reach out to thank loyal customers with coupons which
  undoubtedly helps build positive associations.
• Beat the competition : if you find yourself going head to head with other brands, coupons are a great way to make your offers more attractive and popular in the competitive retail environment.
• Get improved feedback : you can use coupons to encourage customers to take part in a short survey about your brand. Finding out more about potential pain points and fixing the usability of your site and attractiveness of your offering is worth a 20% discount.

Potential Threats of Coupon Marketing

Unfortunately, is it not all sunny and beautiful down here in coupon town. Coupons, just like any other business tool, carry some hidden risk that you need to be aware of before jumping head-on into discounting.

• Excessive and constant discounting is likely to lead to possible brand damage with your company viewed as less desirable, not luxurious and cheap.
• Increase in one-time buyers and reduced rates of brand loyalty among your clientele.
• Tendency to generate traffic from price-driven shoppers and customer outside your target group, leading to less repeat sales, increased acquisition costs and burning of your promotional budget.

Its always best to use Coupons as part of the overall strategy and not rely on it as your only strategy.

I Want to start sending Coupons

First come up with a strategy to grow sales overall with coupons as a part of that strategy. After you have a strategy in place, you need to plan your strategy ahead. In the beginning, run small campaigns with diversified parameters, such as discount value and type, duration, discounted products, etc. Tracking the performance of every single coupon and campaign you launch is crucial to your success. You must be patient and aware that it will take some time and numerous experiments to figure out what works best for your business. See Reports in the Power-eCommerce for details on coupon use and success.

Quick Tip: If you run a small business, start by running 3-4 coupon campaigns from time to time with different discount types and values. Results will show you which of the discounts work best.

Now, start your strategy.

How can I make a Coupon Code?

When using a coupon on your store, shoppers will typically enter the coupon code onto their view cart page.

Here's how to configure the Coupon Code.

Log into your Power-eCommerce Admin and use the left hand navigation menu to:

1. Go to Marketing -> Coupons
2. Click on the "+ Add New Coupon" button at the top right of the page.
3. Enter a Coupon Name; Short description of the promotion. Internal use only.
4. Enter a "Coupon Code" this is the code used by the customer to put in the cart or checkout page (i.e. FREESHIP or 10OFF). DO NOT use spaces.
5. Enter a Short description / Notes for your use only.
6. Select the "Type ($ or %)" This option lets you chose between a dollar about off for the coupon or a percentage off.
7. Enter Amount($ or %) use a dollar amount off if you selected dollar amount in "Type" above if you select "%" then enter the  percentage  off you would like this coupon to be as a decimal IE 10% off would be 0.10 , 20% off would be 0.20 etc..
8. "URL Coupon is active on" Select all by default unless you want it only to show on a given URL this is an advanced option not needed in most uses.
9. Start Date (00/00/0000) enter the data you want the coupon code to be active.
10. End Date (00/00/0000) enter the data you want the coupon code to no longer be active.
11. Free Shipping Coupon - Select this if you would like this coupon to give free ground shipping. If so % or $ off from above are not needed.
12. Active/Disable select if you want the Coupon Code to be active or Disabled.
13. Maximum Discount : Enter the Maximum dollar amount that this coupon can be. (i.e. 25.00, 100.00 and so on).
14. Maximum Uses : Set the Maximum number of times this Coupon Code can be used (i.e. 10, 20, 99999....). Setting this to Zero (0) will make it unlimited.
15. Click "Add Coupon"

Additional Marketing Options if "Mass Email Module" is installed.

These settings below are only used for Emailing of Coupon Codes using the "Mass Email Module" if installed.

1. Marketing Email Header (is shown top left outside the main body)
2. MarkMarketing Email Line 1 (is shown direcly under your logo HTML is ok) 
3. Marketing Email Line 2 (is the main selling point for the coupon and is the 1st line inside the coupon email HTML ok) 
4. Marketing Email Line 3 (is displayed under the main selling point above HTML ok) 
5. Marketing Email Line 3 (is displayed under the main selling point above HTML ok)