Coupon Promotions
Tips & Advice to help you make your decision on Coupon Promotions
Coupon promotions are an inexpensive way to market your products or services. They are useful for promoting a particular product, increasing brand awareness, enticing new customers, and rewarding current customers.
Coupons can be distributed to customers via newspaper ads, email, or direct mail. You might also want to distribute coupons in the store or give out coupons for future purchases after a customer has made a purchase. Many retailers use coupon pack services, such as Valpack and Money Mailer, which send large groups of coupons to targeted consumers on a regular basis. You might also want to contact News America Marketing, which creates the free-standing inserts used in Sunday papers across the country. A creative, high-tech way to run a coupon promotion is to send coupons via text message. Using a service such as Groupon to offer a one-time coupon deal is another way to get new customers and increase awareness of your brand.
To evaluate how well your coupon campaign is doing, you'll want to track coupon redemption. You can use tracking codes on the actual coupons to help you determine where people are picking up your coupons so that you can tailor future coupon promotions using that information.
To learn more about coupon promotions, check out the links on this page provided by Business.com.
Marketing with Coupons
How to entice new and repeat customers with deals and discountsBy Maggie Rauch Everyone loves a good deal, and coupons make your products and services more attractive by offering customers a price break. Although they're especially popular in the consumer packaged goods and fast food franchise industries, coupons can be employed by almost any type of business, from a carpet cleaning service to a tanning salon.
Coupons are a valuable communication tool as well. They allow you to:
- Invite customers to try your products or services at a low risk.
- Encourage shoppers to buy in greater quantity.
- Motivate people to make a purchase now.
- Attract buyers during slow seasons or during extremely competitive periods.
Try coupon mailers
Coupon mailers stuffed with offers from various local businesses reach millions of households and businesses yearly. With these shared coupon mailers, you can either focus on a single local market or on a national audience. Some national mailers allow you to vary your message based on zip code, city, state, or region.
Try:
Find out how to get your coupons included in well-known coupon mailers at Money Mailer or Valpak.
Go high-tech with mobile text message campaigns
Text message or short message service (SMS) coupons let you deploy instant discounts, turning around a slow day of sales. They also help you reach that elusive younger generation that doesn't clip coupons.
Try:
Air2Web helps companies create and track mobile marketing campaigns, including mobile coupon execution. Find out if a university in your area has a system like MoBull Plus, a system at the University of South Florida powered by Rave Wireless, that allows students to opt in to receive text-message coupons from local advertisers.
Target Web-savvy shoppers
Reach bargain hunters online by placing printable coupons or electronic/paperless coupons on Web sites that specialize in online savings offers.
Try:
Contact Q Interactive for information on how to target consumers on its coupon site, Coolsavings.com. Or place your offers on coupon mailer Valpak.com's online coupon site.
You've got deals: email coupons
Email coupons help you reach consumers who'd rather surf the Web than snip discounts out of a newspaper. They also give you additional exposure as consumers forward great deals to friends.
Try:
Start by giving your customers the opportunity to share their email addresses with you. To find a list broker who can help you find email marketing lists, search the Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) Yellow Pages.
Slip into the Sunday paper
For millions of consumers, scouring the newspaper for coupons is an integral part of their Sunday ritual. Getting your coupons in the mix can help place your product on their shopping list. But beware, it'll be pricy.
Try:
Find rates, specs and schedules for placing a coupon in News America Marketing's free-standing inserts (FSIs) for newspapers nationwide.
- Protect yourself from fraud. If you suspect that someone is mis-redeeming your coupons, contact law enforcement or the Coupon Information Corporation, a non-profit consortium of merchandisers dedicated to preventing coupon fraud.
- Look for partners in your coupon efforts. Retailers are banding together to offer deals as a group, forming email and direct-mail partnerships so consumers can get restaurant deals from one source, apparel deals from another.
