Gone are the days when people used to visit a physical store to get them their desired products. They still do, but many people have now acquired a hassle-free way of shopping, known as E-commerce in the world of digital marketing.
With the advancement in technology, many online retail businesses have surged in popularity. They have invented and adopted several effective strategies that further help them to prosper, boost their sales, and engage customers like no other, such as, online coupons, seasonal discounts, promotional codes, free shipping, or voucher codes.
Types of Coupons
Digital Coupons
Online coupon codes are a form of discount to promote the brand and its products. They are usually applied in the checkout stage of online transactions when people add their selected items to the cart and proceed to pay.
Physical Coupons
Physical coupons are usually used in your brick-and-mortar stores in printed forms but it is hard to bear their printing, insertion, and distribution costs. On the other hand, you can even scan online coupons or QR codes when you shop from a physical store. You can get hold of them through advertisements, emails, newsletters, or catalogs.
How to Strategize Coupon Marketing for Effective and Increased Sales?
Email Marketing
Building an email list is one of the powerful marketing strategies to secure more deals. Drive your audiences for a quick sign-up by offering them a coupon code or a discount offer.
Add Content That Sells
Pair your coupon codes with captivating content and visuals that tend to grab more customers and maximize the chances of sales for a merchant.
Fulfill Purchaser’s Expectations
Shoppers are always in search of seasonal sales and rush to the markets when they are offered. In the same manner, online customers seek promotional codes and online coupons when they browse e-commerce websites. Marketers at https://www.dealdrop.com/ understand that people love to shop more when they are offered discounts. The use of such strategies has increased over time and has proven to optimize the sales of online retailers. The reason why marketers come up with new ideas and tactics regularly is to keep customers wanting more and more.
Explore Different Channels
Since social media is a platform where billions of people connect daily, marketing your business on such channels helps you introduce your brand to new audiences. It is also a great channel to advertise your coupons given the number of audiences that surf the internet daily. Coupons can also serve as a channel tester where you can compare and measure their frequencies and usage on different platforms. By doing so you can detect which platform is good for marketing.
Use Great Incentives
Using great incentives is the best way to attract shoppers who will find it irresistible to abandon their carts. For instance, there is no harm in using statements like, ‘’You are only 10$ away from getting a 25% discount on your entire order.” This drives customers to add more items to their cart and increase sale items in the cart.
Target Festivals
On special occasions or festivals, such as Christmas, retailers use coupon codes such as “Santa Clause” or “Merry Christmas” as a proper marketing campaign. People who celebrate such festivals in full swing associate their values and feelings with them and find it hard to resist such coupons.
Pros and Cons of Using Online Coupons
When you incorporate online coupons in your promotional planning, then do not forget to analyze their positive and negative sides equally.
Pros:
While offering quality products with fair pricing is sufficient to entice shoppers, the use of discounts further complements your overall success. If you plan coupons according to your budget, you will not incur any loss. Furthermore, promoting them on social media platforms and other affiliated websites, helps you to increase conversion rates that lead customers to your landing page and ultimately proceed them to complete their purchases. Hence, they are an effective way of increasing transactions. When used in conjunction with other offers and content, coupons can maximize the savings of online shoppers. It helps retailers to retain their current and prospective customers who love visiting their websites that will ultimately increase their traffic.
Cons:
Coupons are an effective way of building brand equity but there are some risk factors associated too.
Creates Negative Impressions
Many retailers exploit customers with constant deals to drive their sales that can lessen the worth of their brand. Coupons tend to associate a negative connotation with a discounted product. For instance, consumers usually view such products as outdated, impaired, non-original, soon to be expired, or non-worthy.
Incomplete Purchases
Retailers unwillingly drive purchasers to abandon their carts when they specifically reach the checkout phase in search of coupon codes. Leaving shopping carts without completing purchases is a new behavioral pattern found in online customers who do it for the sake of hunting discount codes and online coupons. They add random stuff in their carts and proceed to the checkout page just to make sure if the brand is offering any promotional discount.
The Sales are Delayed
When you offer them coupons regularly, you are increasing the risks of delayed and less profitable sales. Retailers might not know but they psychologically and unintentionally train shoppers to wait for better discounts. The more they wait, the more delayed are the sales. Rather than including coupons on every item, incorporate them on specific products or those that have a lower chance of selling at fair market prices and need the support of additional deals.
Online shopping provides us with a hassle-free way to shop within the comfort of our homes. And to put the cherry on the top, retailers are now using different strategies to trick customers into buying more than their requirements. Similarly, the use of online coupons is not an exception. They are one of the most convenient and effective ways to build a customer portfolio, generate more profits, and highlight your brand among others. But we must prevent risk factors and use them effectively to avoid major losses and retain our value.