How to use coupon codes to promote your business

If you are an run an online e-commerce program, it’s very likely that you have come up against the coupon code dilemma. You offer a deal that allows customers to use a coupon code for a free item, free shipping, or to get a discount. However, what do you do when the promotion ends?

If you leave the box open, studies have shown that customers will pause in the transaction and go search for a code, sometimes leading to cart abandonment and lost sales. However, you can use this coupon code to your advantage. In this post, we'll discuss some some of those opportunities.

Loyalty programs

Loyalty programs were all the rage when ecommerce first started but, due to complex implementations and lack of customer sophistication, they never really caught on. Having a formal loyalty program may be too complicated, but maintaining an email mailing list isn’t. If you have an email list, ideally you should be mailing out once a week. For many businesses, though, that’s just not a reality. If you do have an email list, a bi-weekly or monthly email is doable and should really be the bare minimum. When you send out your email, make sure to include a coupon code.

These codes don’t need to be big $10 off shipping or 5% off orders over $150. If you have an idea of how much it costs you to acquire a new customer, give away something below that. If you want to be clever, allow customers to signup to the email list right in the cart in a pop-up window, and give them the discount coupon on the spot.

Facebook

One restaurant in Arizona used their Facebook page to give their fans access to discount coupons and has been very successful with it. This can be hugely successful tactic if you understand the concept of edgerank. In most cases, people aren’t going to see your messages by visiting your page; instead, they are going to see it in their newsfeed. Edgerank calculates one person’s interest in another person or fan page by the interaction. 

If they visit, click, like, read, or interact with another person or fan page, that person’s or page’s updates are more likely to appear in their news stream. So incentivize people to become fans of you on Facebook by displaying coupon codes only to your fans. Once edgerank establishes a bond, the content marketing aspect of your Facebook strategy will be much more effective.


/Michael Gray Graywolf's SEO Blog/