Online shopping is an easy process to purchase goods online. It gets more exciting to shop online when there are discounts, combo deals and offers. These discounts, deals and offers do not stay active for a long time. However, coupons are always available on the tagged products which you sell. However, coupons are always available tagged to the product you sell. Now, give a thought to your consumers’ purchasing pattern. Think about your consumer’s last transaction using a coupon? Did it benefit the consumer? Was it easy for him to subscribe to your coupon? Was there any feedback about how user friendly is your coupon? Now, if you can recap your consumer’s transaction, it would help you to get an insight on the coupon usage of your online portal. However, from the perspective of marketing these questions help to know the purchasing patterns of a customer as well.
How do coupons benefit new startups in the online market?
An eCommerce startup faces a lot of competition. However, the owners of the startups find coupons as a great option to give their customers reasonable benefits to purchase goods from their site. By giving updates on your coupons or sending a reminder email on what the customer was looking to purchase, makes the customer come back to your site, and invest time and money.
Are Coupons Worth more than a saving?
An extremely general error and a message that has gone across many consumers using coupons is that they feel coupons are just another way of saving for later purchases. However, coupons are a simple way to save a customer’s money immediately while they shop. To get across the reality of coupons and its benefits for your consumers is a keen check on the purchase pattern. While shopping it’s a normal human behaviour to do a simple check about the coupons and see if it is beneficial for the product you are purchasing. This common human behaviour can be taken as an example and the coupons can be created in such a way which captures buyers’ attention and makes it worthwhile to pick a coupon.
Image Source: businessinsider
Create User Friendly Coupons:
Usually coupons are not available for all the products, on an online portal. However, if the coupons are readily available for many products, it becomes easy for consumers, to get accustomed to use them. On any online site to catch any consumer’s attention we have just 15 seconds. So make sure your coupon searches for consumers at the right time instead of consumers searching coupons. Ways to make coupon consumer friendly:
Trigger a coupon popup that’s shown when the consumer exits the site.
Have a coupon popup while the consumer is deciding on what to actually purchase from the selected products in the shopping cart.
Make sure coupon details are visible while the consumer checkouts just like a sticky note, so that when he redeems the coupon, the details are visible.
Image Source: happycheckout.in/
Different incentives, offers and deals, according to consumers’ interests:
The discounts, offers and deals online are good. However, they last for a very short time. Have a keen observation of the browsing patterns of the consumer, that would help in knowing the interest and coupons can be offered to use accordingly. Make sure your coupon design is very attractive to have a good consumer interest.
Coupon Customization:
Analysing the consumers’ buying pattern and also keeping a track of what the consumer usually purchases. A coupon can be customized to the product. It’s a gesture of making your consumer feel special. This would make the consumer visit your site and also utilize the coupons.
The different ways to create customized coupons are:
For the consumers who have visited your site for the first time, display a coupon for first time shoppers on your site.
For consumers who make efforts to revisit your site probably for second, third or fourth time, some revisit coupons shall be made available to appreciate their efforts of coming to your site again.
To bring in more visitors to your site, use of referrals would help. Like using Facebook or Twitter. If the consumer visits your site through Facebook a coupon can be given if they like your page.
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Choosing/Selecting Partners to Distribute Coupons:
To get the coupons distributed to a larger audience and bring in more traffic to your websites, select online portals as your partners like, HappyCheckout, coupon rani, coupondunia etc. These portals help in sending out a loud message to customers how coupons help in saving money. These portals can become your partner if there is some commission on sales fixed or some incentives to promote your brand.
Image Source: happycheckout
Call to Action:
At times, consumers do not give attention to the coupon value. However, if there is a coupon popup every time a consumer browses your site, gives connect to consumers and more people visiting the website. Have a direct call to action coupons which say, Don’t miss out! Click here to save 10% now or Click on this coupon in the next 10 secs and avail 20% discounts.
Retargeting Strategies:
Owners of different businesses can wisely use coupons as one of their major marketing strategies by sending emails for shopping cart abandonment, so that customers get back to the website. Retargeting with brochures, banners, advertisements, etc. To build a sustainable business, never showcase your website as a portal for discounted products.
Make your Coupons Exciting:
Coupons should be like an excitement for consumers. Offering same coupons on a monthly basis, gets a little boring and consumers get to know where to click to ignore it.
Following are the ways to make the coupons more exciting:
Make sure the coupons are seen at different places on your website every time there is a new visitor.
Try to change the appearance of the coupons at timely intervals to grab quick attention of the consumer.
Have different ways of sending a call to action messages to use coupons and to bring in traffic to your website.
Create a Sense of Urgency:
According to Robert Cialdini’s principle of scarcity. We like things more, when there are less of them to go around or they’re available only for a short time. This is a normal social behaviour which can be taken as an advantage in creating coupons and sending out a message to your consumers that the coupon deal would not last for a long time.
Ways to create urgency:
Setting a coupon expiry date that should not extend more than a week.
Sending messages and updating about expiring coupons and sending messages like ‘Shop Today’, ‘Last Day to Redeem Your Coupon’. Such call to action messages bring lots of traffic to your website.
Asking for Consumer’s Feedback:
According to Robert Cialdini’s Principles of Influence, Humans naturally want to return favours and treat others as they themselves have been treated. This piece of information helps in approaching the consumers visiting your site by asking them to provide their email address for getting updates on coupons and customized valuable coupon codes.
Ways to get your consumers’ response:
While giving out a coupon ask for little details like email address, name, etc. which is a helpful information for sending updates to your consumers.
Create ways of getting your consumers attracted by giving them some tips or information on coupons and its uses and gradually creating interest to subscribe to your website newsletter.
Let Emails help you Recover your Consumers:
While consumers come to your website, redeem the coupon but do not purchase the product. This can be changed by sending an email to the consumer as a reminder to purchase the product. Emails work wonders for recovery and are also known as ‘Remarketing Strategy’. As 44% of recovery mails are opened, some 10% click on the coupons, and around 30% get back to the site and complete their purchase. However, to make the most out of these recovery emails, make sure every time a consumer uses your coupon an email is sent as an update.
Ways to do a complete follow up:
Be quick in sending a detailed email about the product to be purchased with the details of the coupon used and link to the website the consumer purchasing from. This email should be sent within 10 minutes of the consumer redeemed the coupon.
If the consumer has not responded to your first email send another email giving the expiry details of the coupon. A reminder within 24 hours. Giving complete information about the intended product to be purchased and asking for a response back if not interested.
Post 7 days send a third email like a reminder, just a few hours before the coupon expires and link of the website. The percentage of these emails turning into sale is less. However, the deal can be completed by giving some added discounts.
By following the above given tips to leverage coupons and driving traffic to your website would be a good option to consider. Once there is a clear idea about the consumer browsing patterns and coupon choosing patterns. You will then be able to predict the right time and place of coupon been placed. As a normal human behavior reduction in price always excites any consumer. So, take this as an advantage and make sure your coupons are effective and attractive.
The article is authored by Uday Nandan, CEO, Happycheckout.in
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