11 TIPS to Improve Your Coupon Marketing Strategy in 2023

Momina Asif
Momina Asif

Last updated on

February 16, 2024

We all acknowledge the importance of coupon marketing in a business. If you run a store too, we believe you have applied coupon marketing to elevate your sales. However, if you'd like to thrive in the market by gaining some competitive advantage, here are 11 tips to improve your coupon marketing strategy in 2023 that can help you achieve so. 

What is coupon marketing?

Coupon marketing is a strategy implied by shops or companies that offer discounts to their valuable customers. Through the use of coupon codes, vouchers, and other discounting methods, they enhance the desire of the customers to save money by making purchases.

If you make a keen observation, you can see that they are available in generalized and personalized forms. If you ask about the distribution method, you can perform them both online and offline. Overall, they are a fantastic marketing tool that guarantees both seller and customer satisfaction simultaneously.

11 Tips to improve your coupon marketing 

If you ever wonder about the effectiveness of coupon marketing, you must learn that around 90% of the customers purchase and use coupons somehow. Hence, let us show you a step-by-step guide on coupon marketing for guaranteed results for your company.

1. Understanding the essence of coupon marketing

Of course, who doesn't love to save some bucks during shopping? Through coupons and deals, customers have been enjoying cheaper shopping from time to time. Hence, offering them incentives will not just make them your loyal customers but also shower you with ample new customers.

Everybody loves couponing! For instance, a group of friends went out shopping. If they see your coupon advertisements, they might enter your shop to purchase products. Or else, there is a greater chance that they'll walk right past the store.

2. Noting down the benefits of coupon marketing

If we start presenting the benefits of coupon marketing strategies, companies use several coupon examples to flourish in the market. However, we'd like to explain it to you in a general tone so that you can understand and relate them to your brand.

benefits of coupon marketing
  • Accomplish your sales goals faster

You can make your customers perform a task for coupons for free products. This acts as a very effective strategy that helps your business to achieve sales and marketing targets. For example, it can make your low-selling products sell fast, which can quickly clear up your stock and cover up the probable loss that you, could suffer for not selling.

  • Growing customer base

Coupons work a great deal when it comes to owning the loyalty of the customers. These customers, in return, refer your brand to their near and dear ones. Hence, if your brand approaches on your own to greet loyal customers, it significantly improves your customer base.

  • Beat the competition

According to coupon statistics, printed or e-coupons work as a significant boost up when you need to gain a competitive advantage in the market. You gain more customers into your store, which ultimately makes it the talk of the town.

  • Track your success rate

Coupons can also help you in monitoring the business's return on investment (ROI). For instance, when people avail online digital vouchers, it allows you to easily count the redeemed coupons that determine the success of your offer. This is a huge advantage because, on online platforms, you don't need to even ask them how they located your business.

3. Accept the downfalls of coupon marketing strategy

This is almost an inevitable outcome that, when something has potential benefits, indeed does have some disadvantages too. As a result, knowing them beforehand can help you keep your brand in check to prevent losses.

disadvantages of coupon marketing
  • Possible brand damage

Always relying on discount coupons is a harmful attempt that can potentially affect your business by making it look less desirable and cheap.

  • Increase in one-time buyers

If your store mainly attracts one-time buyers, your brand will likely have a lower amount of loyal customers. This problem arises primarily when the coupons are placed in public places, websites, or paid advertising.

  • Higher shopping cart abandonment

Most of the customers tend to churn up when they can recognize coupon boxes at the checkout regions. According to recent statistics, this leaves them to look out for a deal in the coupon codes.

  • Risking your bottom line

You can't just end up applying for promotions right away. Offering discount codes through promotions requires careful screening and locating targeted audiences so that you don't overspend on your campaign.

Overspending on promotion often mishits your brand as fraud. Hence, you need to ensure that you're discounting cautiously by narrowing targets and not publicizing the coupons. In addition, you need to choose a proper coupon provider that doesn't threaten any harm during coupon distribution and redemption criteria.

4. Traditional vs. digital- choosing the right coupon type

Before you dig deeper, understanding the difference between traditional and digital coupons is a crucial aspect of coupon marketing strategy.

As a brand owner, the first question that can arise in your mind is what method you should prefer to consider. There are specific methods, in general- online, traditional, or a mix of both kinds of coupons.

The preference for these coupons varies from time to time, but considering the current pandemic situation, people mostly prefer online coupons rather than physical ones. During the COVID crisis, most of us are staying at home, they prefer to shop online. Hence, if you want to grip the market through distributing coupons traditionally, it might be a tough-luck to thrive in the market.

However, it ultimately doesn't brush out the possibility of applying traditional coupons. In some cases, while online coupons work effectively, especially in tech companies, others can still imply traditional coupons for their business.

You can go for a fusion of both traditional and online digital coupons for your brand too! You can choose between static and dynamic QR codes on your traditional coupons to drive people online, enabling cross-platform customer engagement.

However, recent statistics claim that more people prefer online digital coupons when compared to printed coupons. As you step forward in providing discount coupons physically, it'll not only be regarded as less eco-friendly but also requires a lot of budget for printing, sorting, and distribution.

With Shopify pages by Mailmunch, create stunning landing pages, fully customized and optimized for conversion. Add features like coupons and spinwheels for interaction and engagement.

5. Determine whether discount codes fit your business model

Before you hit the market with your discount codes, learn whether your business accepts the concept of distributing coupons in the first place. Of course, one might counter the statement by noting that discount offers attract customers all the time. But the fact is, it doesn't apply to every market.

To get your brand involved with discount marketing, check your brand image. Many high-end shops don't prefer offering discount codes since it doesn't complement their high-end image. In contrast, you can even witness some brands heavily relying on discounts to gain customers' attention.

Hence, we can note that you need to clear out some aspects before jumping into offering discount codes. You can get yourself started by analyzing recent sales and other relevant data like:

  • The most minor and most profitable products
  • The best-selling product
  • Rate of shopping cart abandonment
  • Most loyal customers and their favorite product  
  • One time purchasers
  • Customer purchasing patterns and trends affecting those patterns
  • Peak sales time and off-peak period

You can also acquire these statistics easily through a point-of-sale system, website analytics packages, eCommerce platforms, CRM, and many other sales and marketing tools. Even if you finally consider launching discount coupons, research other competitors first for the period they offer for the coupon to be effective.

6. Divide your audience into segments

Each set of customers in the market comes with a unique set of tastes. Hence, launching monotonous discount coupons can only target a specific set of audiences. In such cases, the thing that you need to do here is categorize your customers into a set of groups first.

Instead of integrating a single couple, try to approach them considering their demographics and geographical information. The customers can be sliced into two categories:

  • New customers

Coupon statistics suggest that around 80% of the customers are prone to switching brands more often to redeem discounts. Now, how can you guarantee their bond with your brand? By answering the following set of questions, you can get a lead:

  • What are their passions?
  • What city do they call home?
  • What exactly do they buy?
  • What is the extent of their earnings?
  • What gender are they?
  • How old are they?
  • What do they think about politics?

However, you need to make the coupon more convincing for these customers to become your loyal ones. Moreover, the offer also requires being sufficient enough to ensure bonds with the customers. Then again, don't offer them "spoiling discounts" that can ultimately rob your revenue target.

  • Existing customers

You might not need to strategize much and put on sweat for current customers, but that doesn't mean that you don't require pleasing them via coupon discounts. We have discovered that there has always been a strong link between coupons and customer loyalty.

You can offer your old customers discount coupons through a popup or coupon banner on your site, send coupons to your email list, blog about it or post it on your social media.

Mailmunch allows you to create customized forms and pop-ups with no coding required. With the intuitive drag and drop builder, create your opt-in forms within minutes and start generating leads.

In all manners, attempting to make existing customers valued can cement a long-term relationship with them. Instead of offering them coupons on their already preferred products, try offering products they barely interact with. This is an effective method in keeping coupon marketing strategy sustainable.

7. Determine where to market discount offers

In this modern age, coupon distribution isn't only restricted to leaflets and brochures. We have a lot of channels through which we can ensure that the coupons are reaching potential customers. Let's discuss them more elaborately to acknowledge the effectiveness each of them offers.

  • Email marketing

You can always send an email to your valued customers and keep them updated about your brand's latest product arrivals and discounts. However, ensure that the discount code is restricted to one person only. Make it accessible so that one customer can pass it on to others. So, we can conclude that email coupons can help promote and expand your customer base organically in digital times.

Mailmunch is an all-in-one email marketing platform that lets you create, deliver and track your emails so that you can generate leads and convert them into paying customers. Choose from 100+ pre-built templates and with the intuitive drag and drop builder, save your time in creating emails.
  • Social media

Comparing other channels, social media is the most effective and most used platform where you can distribute coupons. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are some examples where you can reach out to your brand's new arrivals and deals. Tiktok is especially popular at the moment as you can have a vast reach and get lots of views easily.

In this way, you can reach millions of customers at ease and monitor their impressions collectively, and you can also entice them with generous gifts.

  • Newspaper/magazine

While online coupons are gaining high interest and popularity among brands, printed coupons still work effectively in the coupon market. Both newspapers and magazines are excellent mediums through which you can offer discount codes, whether you run an eCommerce or physical store. Customers can read these codes from the papers and use them online to redeem the discounts.

8. Set your goal with the discount promotion

Without a definitive goal, you can never reach the endpoint. Hence, figuring out what your brand is trying to achieve through discount coupons can help you set goals.

When you're noting down a definitive business goal, you need to first search, break down, think about, and amend strategies. Here is a list of purposes that can help you understand why you need to use coupons.

  • Increase sales
  • Boost your conversion rate
  • Make a client list
  • Encourage existing customers to make additional purchases
  • Boost brand recognition
  • Attract the market of your competitor
  • Reduce the number of abandoned shopping carts
  • Clear stock

In the end, keep in mind that your whole team must work on the line to guarantee definitive goals for the brand.

9. Plan out the deals you wish to offer

The coupon strategy is known for reducing a percentage or dollars on selected items. However, do you know that coupons can be present in various other forms? Integrating the following incentives can significantly elevate the customer numbers at ease.

incentives to grow consumer base
  • Free shipping

Even if we like a product, we sometimes back off by noticing the shipping price on the site. Hence, providing coupons for discounted shipping prices can engage more customers and increase your brand's popularity.

  • Gifts

Building goodwill for the customers is one of the most important aspects of keeping a business alive. You can quickly achieve that by providing customers with gifts and handwritten notes.

You can make coupons for your business that consists of a gift for those who hold it. In this way, you can ensure the customers are valued at your store and guarantee that they will revisit your store at some stage. Overall, it's the gesture that matters.

  • Giveaway contests

This is yet another coupon strategy that you can apply to gain a solid customer base. Through organizing a giveaway contest, it'll automatically build up hype for your brand. You'll see that a myriad of people will apply for the content because we love fine coupons!

Choose a particular product that you'd like to offer to your customers, and through lucky draws, you can announce the winner. Keep in mind that the participants feel involved throughout the process.

  • Referral rewards

Referral rewards can be considered as the method where customers might feel like trendsetting. In this case, the customer will act as a brand ambassador where they'll be recommending your products to other customers with an exciting option of referral codes. As a result, you can easily bag up a considerable number of fresh customers that can help you flourish your business.

These kinds of coupon ideas are meant for attracting more customers to your brand so that you can expand your business. However, it's strongly recommended that you swipe these methods now and then because each process of coupon sales can attract a different set of customers.

Before applying coupon strategy, another aspect you must consider is whether your brand's financial standing supports the idea. If your company finds it challenging to handle the financial turbulence, it can adversely affect your revenue.

  • Get feedback from customers

Getting to know what customers think about your brand is an essential aspect of improving your marketing strategy. With the implementation of quizzes, reviews, surveys, and feedback cards, you can efficiently build a better connection with the customers.

Ask your customers about their purchasing experience, tastes, and anything valuable to the campaign. In return, you can provide them coupons as a reward. Such kinds of coupon rewards are a clever strategy to begin a discussion with your market. Overall, gaining honest reviews from the customers will improve your brand, and you won't need to rely on coupon advertisements.

10. Monitor your coupon advertising efforts

Once you start coupon advertisements, make sure that you track every progress from the beginning. Examine which part of the campaign is boosting your sales and the aspects that are setting you back. As a result, you can improve the errors and come back stronger.

You should understand from the very start that a lucrative coupon is not enough to enhance your deals right away. Just like everything else, it also requires time for the business to develop. Here are some essential steps that can help you analyze the success of your campaign:

  • Keep track of your budgeted costs with the actual ones
  • Match your substantial profits with the planned results
  • See how many products you sold throughout the promotion
  • Study the demographics of the customers you attracted during the promotion

Aside from reaching the targeting sales through the campaign, there are other factors that you need to consider. First of all, you must take care of the loyal customers because they alone create a significant impact in increasing the sale of your business. Even in this case, you might not see an overnight result, but eventually, you'll be rewarded with one later on.

11. Coupon personalization

Personalizing coupons is very effective in coupon marketing strategy. The concept of personalization means the customers reveal their personal information to achieve lucrative discount coupons. And, to accomplish that, your brand needs to be more intimate with the customers.

So, should a customer give up your privacy just to gain sales? How justified is this? You need to understand that there is a fine line that balances both losses of privacy due to revealing personal data and the benefits the customers gain in return.

In general, a majority of the customers prefer to exchange a bit or two of their data with the brands in exchange for availing of personalized coupons.

Hence, to get started with personalization coupons, you need to understand your customers first. You can easily do this by monitoring their behaviors and acquiring their data. You can also attempt to snitch the data by asking them to fill out their profiles, preferences, or surveys.

You need to set a series of questions that answer the information on the field you need. At the same time, ensure the data quality so that the customer feels reluctant to share their data with your business. Once you get your hands on that data, you can start with a coupon personalization campaign.

Here are some examples of data that you can collect from the customers:

  • Relationship status
  • Status of employment
  • Revenue
  • Location
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Details of their contact information, as well as their consent to be contacted through such means
  • History of purchases
  • Preferences for products or services
  • Birthdays, anniversaries, and other significant dates

Once you get that information from your clients, you can import it into your voucher management software and use it to create customized coupons. Such a high level of personalization would be impossible without appropriate databases and coupon automation tools.

  • Coupon aggregation platforms

You may make your coupons visible even in areas where they are hardly accessed with the help of various websites. As a result, you'll be able to attract more clients from a larger population, giving you a competitive advantage over your competition.

  • Email

As we've already highlighted the advantages of email, one feature that should be mentioned is very individualized. Customers can interact with your brand on a one-on-one basis when you send them an email and also inquire about how to get coupons.

Conclusion

Managing a business is no easy task. Everything you do, from setting clear goals to achieving them, is crucial to growing your market sales. As you can see, one of the tactics for standing out in the market is to develop a coupon marketing strategy for your brand. We hope you found our post on "11 Tips to Improve Your Coupon Marketing Strategy in 2023" helpful!

FAQs

1. What is a digital coupon?

We are more accustomed to seeing traditional coupons than digital coupons. You may quickly redeem digital coupons while purchasing qualified things, even though they are in electronic form.

2. How do digital coupons work?

Digital coupons offer discounts on your purchase, lowering the total cost. It can either reduce the price of the item you're buying or cover the cost of shipping.

The digital coupons are placed immediately into the shopper's card, which you can use to purchase.

3. How to use coupons?

When you're about to make a purchase, apply the coupon first. Otherwise, it can nullify the coupon's value by reducing the overall amount of the sale by a significant amount.

4. How to use coupons in marketing?

You may take advantage of coupon marketing in a variety of ways. Here's a list of reasons why you should utilize coupons in your marketing:

  • Discounts can be added to lead forms
  • Take advantage of limited-time offers
  • Plan out the different types of deals you'll be able to provide
  • Make a Customer Appreciation Program
  • Use a variety of distribution channels
  • Make Use of Innovative Visuals

5. How can I purchase a coupon for free?

Again, being a high-priority customer at a particular store might earn you free coupons. You will be given a loyalty card in such circumstances, which will allow you to purchase things for free. On the other hand, you can hunt for free coupons on the internet at coupon distribution sites.

6. How do I begin couponing?

If you read our post above, you'll have a better understanding of how to start couponing. Before deciding on a discount coupon, research your company's financial situation as well as the marketplaces.

Mailmunch is an end-to-end email marketing and lead generation platform that helps you create your email list, generate leads, increase conversions and resultantly boost sales!

Author Bio

Momina Asif

Content marketer by day and book nerd by night, Momina works at Mailmunch as a Marketing Communications Specialist. Momina eats, sleeps, and breathes content marketing. Her expertise ranges from ideation to production to distribution of content, thanks to 4+ years of experience in the B2B content marketing sphere.

Tags:

No items found.
Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles