How to Use Discounts and Coupons for Your eCommerce Store

No one can deny juicy promotions & discounts offered by brands. Discovering the best deals, discounts, and coupons have become an integral part of shopping for many consumers. Today, online merchants are facing a conflict about whether to offer a discount or not, when to offer it, and how much a discount to offer.

Be whatever it may be, we can all agree that discount is one of the powerful weapons in the arsenal of eCommerce store owners to drive customers and boost sales. As per the research by Hawk Incentives, 97% of the shoppers look for a deal while shopping, and 92% of them are always on the lookout for the best deal. Another study by Spendmenot found that over 90% of consumers use coupons in some way.

However, using it inappropriately can put your brand in jeopardy. Thus, we have come up with the best and effective strategies on how to use discounts and coupons for your eCommerce store. But first, let’s look at the pros and cons of doing so.

Pros of Offering Discounts & Coupons:

• Helps to boost store sales, conversions, and revenue.
• A vital aspect for a brand to increase the rate of new customer acquisition.
• Also, helps to retain customers and increase their loyalty level.
• Minimize losses on unsold products.
• Helps to meet the sales goals for your eCommerce store.

Cons of Offering Discount & Coupons:

• The foremost con of it is lower profit margins.
• Attracting the wrong crowd won’t provide much value to your business down the lane.
• Lower conversions after discount or sale end.
• It decreases the perceived value of your products.

How to Use Discounts & Coupons for Your eCommerce Store

In general, terms, offering discounts and coupons have a straightforward structure where brands offer a discount and customers receive a product or service. While it may look simple but there’s a lot that goes behind for brands to offer promotions to the right audience at the right time. So, let’s see how you should implement promotional offers.

1. Promoting to the Right Audience:

The first thing to consider is the audience you want to promote and target with your discount & coupon offers. Based on your goals of running a campaign, you must decide who is going to be the target customers: your entire audience or just a specific people out of it.

You can go for your entire audience but that must not be the only option for promoting discounts & coupons. However, targeting a specific segment does not necessarily mean you must exclude those who fall out from the target customer base. For instance, your Best Buys for “Back to School” are not only for school and college goers but also for the best buy audience.

It’s up to you to allow only certain customers to reap the benefits of the offer or generalize the event for all.

2. Time and Schedule Your Promotions:

Offering discounts at the right time is more necessary than any other aspect. To get optimized customer engagement, you must offer discounts and coupons at a time they are most likely to engage. For example, offering discounts during holidays or around festival days can spur the conversion rate for you.

A back to school sale makes more sense around August when schools are about to open. The same goes for other holidays like Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, and BlackFriday. Timing your eCommerce sales promotions, flash sales, and discounts that can’t be tied with holidays is also important.

If you plan to do it during the non-holiday period then make sure you select days such as weekends that earn more engagement and sales for you. Timing and scheduling your campaigns must be intentional that help you to reach your business goals.

3. Lay down the Terms & Conditions:

The terms and conditions of your discount and coupons explain to your customers in full if they are applicable and how much money they will save. Your terms and condition should cover who it applies to, what they should do to access the offer, and when they can access it. For instance, say, you offer a discount of 20% on the purchase of products worth $100 only during the month of Feb.

Moreover, the terms and conditions also define any exclusions e.g. you can only offer the above discount or coupons on products except for certain brands. Defining terms and conditions of promotions is vital to allow customers to know how they can reap the proper benefits of it.

Discount & Coupon Strategies to Implement Right Away

Creating and running an effective promotional campaign is not only putting 10% off sign, it’s much more than that. Here’re a few proven & unique promotional campaigns you can implement right off the bat.

• Offer an exclusive discount or coupon only for your social media followers and newsletter subscribers. Exclusive discounts make people feel valued and rewarded. What’s more, they’ll appreciate your efforts and stay loyal to your brand.
• Offer discounts only on mobile and in-app purchases. Doing so has two benefits, first and obvious is to enhance sales from mobile, and second is to boost downloads for your app if you have one. This also works great in creating exclusivity and a sense of value in the minds of your customers.
• Offering event or date-specific discounts & coupons is another tactic up on your sleeve. It helps you to cast a wide net for people who inherently celebrate the said event. Provided you know what your target audience wants, it can help you to be laser-focused in your offerings.
• One best way to increase the number of sales is to offer hefty discounts to your employees. Many brands overlook such a simple way to generate more business even if it does not help make much profit. Your employees can be the best customers of yours so consider this as an option.
• To take your promotional offers to another level is to create a membership program and offer members-only discounts or coupons.

Summing Up

In a nutshell, rewarding your customers with discounts and coupons is not a new yet effective promotional strategy for many. However, it’s not every business’s cup of tea. You must start with a clear goal, promote it to the right audience, time and schedule it, and lay down the terms governing the promotional campaign.

Need help in planning promotional strategies for your eCommerce store? M-Connect Media is here to help. Consult our eCommerce experts right now to get started with your business growth and success.