Coupons are a good way to attract shoppers back to your website during the festive season and January sales. Coupons are known to drive loyalty, and consequently revenue.
As well as old‐style individual and mass coupons, you can use a lot of tricks to preferentially target loyal customers. For example:
- Hourly coupons ‐ use a single slot to display the current hourly coupon in your emails and on your website whenever you have a big sale on, just like with Hourly Black Friday Offers ﴾see below﴿. Coupons can be site‐wide, or personalized to each visitor, and you can display each of them for one hour but have the code valid for 24 hours.
- Cascading offers ‐ as shoppers buy more they get to see successively more valuable coupons, personalised to them and their Christmas shopping behavior. Done with slot rules.
- Limited quantity offers ‐ only the first 1000 people see a coupon; after that they see an expired message. Done by only loading a few coupon codes
- Offer a discount that drops over time, or other exotic offers, in your emails. For example, starting at 20% then dropping by 1% each hour to a minimum of 10%. Set up the offer on your website and use a Web Crop to copy it into your marketing emails, so they are kept in sync.
The sky's the limit. Get your thinking cap on!
Here are some companies who are getting it right:
B&Q
Leading DIY company B&Q opted to use personal coupon codes in their Christmas emails. This gives the customer a sense of being rewarded and builds brand loyalty. They have also made their coupon usable online and instore, which increases the audience it will appeal to.
Liberty London
Liberty of London's Christmas email is a perfect example of using a single coupon code when promoting a Christmas offer. Also, using a monetary value and labelling it a "Gift Voucher" encourages customer usage as not using it would seem a waste. If you use this approach, consider saying "It's your last chance to claim your £25 gift voucher" to further emphasize the illusion.
Red Letter Days
Red Letter Days have cleverly paired their Christmas voucher offer with recommendations and ideas for Christmas gifts, providing a clear route for customers to follow with their voucher.
Travelodge
Travelodge has not only paired their seasonal voucher with useful ideas and information on how to use it, but has also given customers an easy way to share the deal with their colleagues, friends and family, benefitting both Travelodge and the recipient.
Baker Ross
Baker Ross use recurring offers in the build up to Christmas, bringing people back to them steadily throughout the festive season. Customers will become loyal as they check back on offers, which is valuable to the brand.
For more information about how to use coupons visit: www.freshrelevance.com