The thing with discounts is, the more, the merrier. Everyone loves discounts. And brands have been using discount coupons for many years to get the customers to buy their products. According to various surveys, more than 60 percent of shoppers use a coupon to get a better deal. But simply dishing out coupons to consumers without a strategy will diminish the promotion’s value and impact its performance. And since every brand in the digital space is now looking to gain market share and is hungry for the consumer’s attention,  the shoppers are loaded with several promotions throughout and will redeem the ones which are more suited to their needs. In this blog, we will look at some of the most common mistakes brands make while designing their coupon marketing strategy and how they can rectify those to improve the performance of their campaigns.

One discount for all customers

Many brands offer flat or non-tiered discounts to all their customers regardless of spending while designing their coupon marketing strategy. For example, an e-commerce retailer may provide free shipping on a $50 and above bill value. In this scenario, a customer shopping for $50 will achieve the best value from the offer, but a person spending $200 at your store might feel cheated as there is no incentive to buy extra. But if the brand starts customizing the offers based on different tiers, they will witness better uptake of the promotions. In the example stated above, if the e-tailer tweaks the promotion by offering an additional 10 percent discount for buying over $100 and above, that would help their cause, and the customer will be willing to spend more. This approach will encourage big purchases since the offer gets better as customers increase their spending, and the consumer falling under each tier will have something to look forward to while shopping.

Discounts for longer periods

Another mistake that brands make while implementing their coupon marketing strategy is giving running promotions for a more extended period, which may increase the sales and revenue but will cause significant harm to the brand’s reputation. Besides, simply sending the coupons, which gives the customers much time to take action, usually ends up unused, as people wait to act on those promotions and forget about them later. They even don’t take in the hope that there might be better discounts just around the corner. For brands to generate the maximum revenue from the coupons they have shared with their customers, they need to create a sense of urgency for them to act. According to various research reports, a time-bound coupon that needs the receiver to act promptly or within a limited time window has shown far greater response rates than coupons where consumers have much time to decide whether they want to redeem the offer. In addition, time-bound coupons are a great way to convert tentative or uncertain customers to shop for the product and the brand.

Insignificant discounts

Simply providing the consumers with discount and promotional coupons that are insignificant or cannot generate any excitement is not the way to go with your coupon marketing strategy. Consumers will only act when they see any incremental benefits of shopping for your products, not when they are getting something they hardly care about. Furthermore, reports suggest that customers are always on the lookout for deals and promotions that are hard to resist and will not act until the offer is enticing. So, brands should do their market research and understand the psyche of their customers before charting out the coupon marketing strategy to improve sales. Also, providing offers that are not able to achieve the desired results can hurt the organization’s reputation. However, marketers should be mindful of not giving over-the-top discounts as it will damage the bottom line of the company and will make it challenging to sell the products at full value in the future. Creating a proper balance is the key.

Not measuring coupon performance

While executing your coupon marketing strategy, brands acquire many new customers and increase the shopping frequency of repeat shoppers, which, apart from generating higher sales, also leaves the retailer with a goldmine of data that can be used to improve the offerings further. With so much data, brands can go back to their drawing boards and start strategizing new coupon marketing strategies to enhance their campaigns’ efficacy. E-commerce marketing platform Boostiny’s coupon tracking system allows brands to track and measure the performance of their advertising spends based on actual sales through coupon redemption. In addition, Boostiny’s technology helps brands avoid the complexities and possible issues with the last-click attribution tracking.

Businesses should also calculate the losses or profits while running a specific coupon marketing campaign and determine its effectiveness. But many brands do not effectively measure the impact of their campaigns and keep on making the same mistakes, which makes the whole exercise futile or underperforms in the long run.