28 Feb
Making a promotion by using coupons is an excellent way to reach a new audience, reach the media, build customer loyalty, dispose of stock, disseminate new products and increase sales. This is a strategy that has been used for decades and which, when well planned and implemented, can produce very positive results in the short, medium and long term.
Offering discounts can be a powerful weapon in your conversion arsenal to drive customer loyalty. But, used aimlessly, you can do significant damage to your brand or, worse, become unprofitable.
What are digital coupons?
Digital coupons are discounts and promotions offered by retailers to current or prospective customers. Digital coupons are most often aimed at enticing a consumer to make a purchase at the retailer’s website by offering a certain percentage discount, free shipping, or other discount.
Physical VS digital coupons
Although their purpose is primarily the same, there are a few minor differences between physical coupons and digital versions. Physical coupons are much more expensive to incorporate into your marketing strategy. Physical coupons incur printing, insertion, and distribution costs, whilst digital coupons can be sent by text, email, and automatically generated communications. Whereas, Digital coupons are incredibly easy to send but can get lost in the sea of emails most inboxes now face daily.
The pros and cons of online store offers
Before we jump into different ways you can effectively use offers to increase customer loyalty and acquisition, let’s first look at some of the pros and cons:
Pros of online store offers
- Easy and quick to implement natively in Shopify or using apps
- Easy to track with Shopify’s Discounts Report
- Increased customer loyalty
- Also, Increased customer acquisition
- Increased conversions
- Quickly move stock
- Meet sales goals
Cons of online store offers
- Decreased margins and profitability
- Possible brand damage
- Decreased conversions outside of sale periods if you train visitors to wait for offers
- Tendency to drive non-loyal (price-driven) shoppers
- Tendency to reduce average order size
- Attract customers outside your target market
Who are offers, coupons, and discounts right for?
As mentioned previously, online store offers can be an effective tool for not only customer acquisition but also for customer loyalty. However, it’s important to consider your overall brand strategy before you begin offering discounts.
If you want to position yourself as a higher-end brand or if you have slimmer margins, you may want to consider sticking to customer loyalty offers as opposed to weekly sales. On the other hand, if you have healthy margins, deep discounting and daily or weekly sales might be better for hitting your goals.
Ultimately, you need to consider if offers and which type(s) of offers are right for your brand. Building an online business will generally involve a lot of experimentation to understand what works best. The best approach is to choose a goal for every campaign and offer, start small, and measure the results.
Types of offers, coupons, and discounts
There are several types of discounts and offers you have at your disposal. Let’s take a look at some of the most common:
- Percentage-based discount
- Dollar value discount
- Free shipping
- Free gift
Each of these can be offered in Shopify using two different types of discounts:
- Automatic discounts
- Discount codes
1. Percentage-based discount
One popular way to offer discounts is through percentage-based discounts. This can include smaller incentive percentages like 5% or 10% off, larger discounts to really drive sales like 20% and 25%, or significant percentages like 50%+ to liquidate merchandise that’s old or isn’t moving. You can also easily apply these discounts to multiple collections, products, and locations in Shopify, or offer them based on a specific purchase, like “Buy two sneakers, get 50% off any sweater.”
2. Dollar value discount
Dollar value-based offers can be positioned as a credit. This makes people feel like they’re wasting money if they don’t use it. Pair one of these with a minimum purchase amount to increase its impact, like “Spend $200, get $20 off.”.
An easy trick to keep in mind when deciding between a percentage or fixed amount discount for a specific product is the “rule of 100”. If your item is less than $100.00, use a percentage discount; if higher, use a fixed amount discount. This is a psychological trigger that will result in the highest perceived value for your customers.
3. Free shipping
Shipping costs are one major reason for shopping cart abandonment. Offering free shipping is a great way to mitigate this and increase conversions.
Use free shipping in conjunction with a minimum purchase requirement to increase your average order value, which you can set up as a shipping setting in Shopify. You can even combine your free shipping offer with other seasonal promotions, like a 20% discount code for email subscribers, to increase the value of your offer.
4. Free gift
A free gift with a purchase can be a great way to provide additional value to customers. If used strategically, it can also be used to increase average order size and/or to get rid of products that aren’t moving. You can set a minimum purchase requirement or a volume requirement using a Buy X, Get Y discount in Shopify to offer a free gift for orders over $200, or once someone buys 5 items.
5. Automatic discounts
Automatic discounts apply to every eligible cart, and customers see them on the cart page before they start the checkout process. It’s a great way to run a storewide promotion on a product, category, or on all of your products without making your customers enter a discount code.
Skipping the code can help encourage orders, and speed up checkouts too. In September 2019, U.S. customers who started checking out on Shopify with a discount already applied were 1.8 times more likely to place an order than without a discount, and they checked out 25 seconds faster with an automatic discount compared to a discount code.
Plus, when there’s already a discount applied to their cart, there’s no need for customers to leave the checkout to hunt for a discount code or email you because they couldn’t find the code you sent. All this adds up to a smoother experience for your customers, and potentially higher conversion rates for you.
6. Discount codes
Discount codes are codes that your customers enter during the checkout process to redeem a specific offer. They’re a tried-and-true way to offer discounts to the right people, whether that’s everyone on your email list or a specific segment like new subscribers or repeat customers.
Using discount codes can also help you track the success of your marketing efforts. If you’re running multiple campaigns, creating a separate discount code for each can make it easier to see the relative impact on sales.
Ideas to inspire your ecommerce coupon program
There are a hundred and one ways you can use sales, offers, discounts, and deals to drive customer loyalty, acquisition, and conversions.
1. Weekly/monthly discounts
These are traditional sales used to drive conversions. Often, these sales are used at the end of a month or quarter to increase revenues to meet business goals.
2. Pre Launch offers
If you’re still in the pre launch stage of your business or maybe even launching a new product, you can use pre launch offers to drive traffic and pique interest, turning new customers into loyal customers.
3. Holiday and seasonal deals
Holiday seasons, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the big ones, but the rest of the whole year is sprinkled with national and memorial holidays that provide an opportunity to share relevant discounts and offers with customers.
4. Abandoned cart offers
With close to 70% of all people abandoning their carts, abandoned cart email offers can be a powerful tactic to bring those people back. Shopify natively has abandoned checkout recovery functionality built-in if you’re on the Shopify plan or higher. For everyone else, or if you want more customization and analytics, check out Klaviyo.
5. Email/newsletter subscription offer
Building an email list is extremely important for online retailers. By providing an offer in exchange for visitors’ email addresses, you increase the chance of a conversion. You also get their email, providing you with the opportunity to build a relationship, foster customer loyalty, and market to them in the future.
6. Incentives for liking, following, and sharing on social media
One of the hardest parts of running a new online store is getting the word out. Giving visitors and customers an incentive to share your store with their social circles can be an effective way to create inexpensive word-of-mouth referrals.
7. Referral promos
People are much more likely to purchase from you if referred by a friend or family member. Use this to your advantage and leverage offers to encourage referrals. You can choose to give a deal to the person referring, the person being referred, or both.
8. First-time shopper offer
Providing a first-timer’s offer could be just the nudge a first-time visitor needs to be converted to a paying customer.
9. Minimum purchase discount
An offer based on the total value of a shopping cart is an effective upselling and cross-selling tactic to encourage customers to spend more, increasing your average order size. A strategic way to incorporate this into your online store is to calculate your average order value for the previous few months and offer a discount or free shipping on all orders 10% to 20% over your average order value.
You can also offer minimum purchase discounts for specific collections and products. If there’s a particular collection you want customers to focus on, try adding a minimum purchase discount to incentivize your audience.
10. Exclusive social offers
Exclusive offers on your social networks can be a great way to build customer loyalty with those who follow you. Plus, this tactic provides a reason for new people to follow and subscribe to your social channels, which will allow you to market to them in the future as well.
11. Customer loyalty offers
Rewarding customer loyalty can build an even stronger bond while also only providing discounts to customers who already spend money with you. You can easily make discount codes exclusive to specific groups of customers with Shopify.
It can be as simple as sending your best customers a personal email with a discount or credit, using an automated email marketing app like Klaviyo to send email offers when someone makes a certain number of purchases, or implementing a customer loyalty program like LoyaltyLion.
12. Exit intent offer
Sometimes all it takes to convert a visitor to a customer is a last-second offer before they leave. An exit-intent offer will pop up just as your visitor is about to leave your site or close the tab, presenting them with a final offer to purchase.
13. Retargeted promotions
Retargeted offers are effective because they’re only shown to people who have been on your site before. That means that they already know who you are. The ads serve as a reminder to come back, and the offer serves as a nudge to purchase.
14. Influencer offers
Partnering with influential people that have large audiences is a great way to increase exposure to your brand. And by providing an exclusive offer to the influencer’s network, you’re more likely to convert their fans to your customers.
15. Customer loyalty program membership incentives
Rewarding customers for joining your customer loyalty program is an ideal time to share a bonus incentive. This not only rewards customers for engaging with your brand, but it also gives them more motivation to sign up for the program in the first place. If you don’t already have a customer loyalty program in place, it might be time to reconsider.
16. Offers for purchasing online
If you want to drive online sales, consider incentivizing online purchases. Whether you want to use your ecommerce site to supplement your brick-and-mortar sales or create a customer base outside of Amazon, you can drive online conversions by offering something in return.
17. Coupons for purchasing in-person
Just as you can drive online sales with offers, you can also drive in-person sales. This can be at your brick-and-mortar location, if you have one, or at in-person events, such as festivals, fairs, expos, trade shows, etc.
18. Event attendance offers
If you host events, in-person or virtually, you can reward attendees with discounts or free gifts. These discounts can be given during the event or after the event. This helps to continue to nurture the relationship with engaged customers and drive more customer loyalty. Plus, it’ll likely encourage attendance for your next event.
19. Customer milestone discounts
If you have a customer loyalty program, customer milestones are especially important. These milestones could be personal to the customer, such as a birthday or anniversary. Other milestones can celebrate the relationship you’ve built with one another. Those would include the anniversary of the customer’s first purchase or date they joined your customer loyalty program, spending a certain amount of money, making a certain number of purchases, or various engagements with your brand.
Wrap up
Coupons are certainly an attractive way to boost volume and sales. Incorporating them into your marketing mix can quickly build your customer file and temporarily increase your conversion rates. While there isn’t a true substitute for providing quality products and fair pricing, coupons do a great job supporting those efforts when the competition heats up or consumer expectation dictates it.
Plan well and budget accordingly, because getting hooked on couponing can be a very costly, unsustainable strategy many businesses can’t afford. Coupons alone will not build your brand equity, but delivering a far superior experience with a smart coupon strategy and a quality product can.