Voucher codes, coupons, discount certificates. Whatever you call them they’re everywhere nowadays. Groupon has become an overnight success and you can’t go for a meal anywhere nowadays without someone whipping out a coupon they’ve printed out.
So how does email marketing come in? Coupons are a great way to build engagement. It’s an excellent way to persuade people to subscribe to your newsletter. Even by running a short coupon campaign twice a year or so you can boost your open rates significantly. Your subscribers know that every now and again there is a good offer to have and so keep opening and reading your emails.
With the growth of people accessing their emails on their phones, we’re likely to see even more coupons in emails. In the past coupons in emails often required the recipient to print it out at home and bring it in to a shop or restaurant. With smart phones there is no need to be this organised.
We’ve put together a few tips if you want to use coupons in your email marketing campaigns.
Test coupon values and offers
Test what offers get the best results before launching a full campaign. If you get a similar rate of redemption with a 10% voucher as 20% you could save yourself some money. Be imaginative with what you offer.People have become used to 10% off, if you can provide something free that is effectively the same value as the percentage offer it’s much can be easier to catch the imagination of the reader.
Don’t use PDF vouchers
This generally a bad idea, firstly if it’s an attachment to your email it’s going to badly affect your deliverability rate. Even if it’s not an attachment, PDFs can be altered and changed and if you are targeting specific customers this can exploited very easily
Use personalized coupons
Make the coupon specific to the individual, which can be easily achieved using the Dynamic Content Tags and Custom Fields in the Mailing Manager system. Add their name and even their closest store if you have this information. Personalizing the coupon encourages the recipient to use it as it feels more exclusive. It also drives higher engagement in subsequent emails as the recipients feels they are getting special treatment. It also deters fraudulent use of the coupon.
Measure and track the coupon activity
Although this can be time consuming and difficult to implement, it is of course crucial to measure and track the use of the coupons you send out. Not only can you track the success of different types of offer, you can track back to the initial marketing activity which delivered the coupon to the recipient and concentrate further efforts into those channels.
