In today’s digital era, promotional strategies are increasingly diverse and interesting, so competition to attract customers must inevitably also go through digital channels. One thing you can do is to use digital coupons.
In recent years, the trend of using digital coupons has really increased. An eMarketer study conducted several years ago found that as many as 52% of internet users in America, or about 102.5 million people exchanged their digital coupons in 2013. That number then increased in 2014 to reach nearly 111 million, or about 55 % of the population.
What is a Digital Coupon?
Digital coupons are one of the marketing strategies that offer discounts, promotions or other offers to customers or potential customers through online channels in the form of vouchers or coupons.
The emergence of this digital coupon trend can help increase your business revenue, especially those engaged in online business, because the process is very easy, both from the business side and end-user . In general, giving digital coupons to customers aims to encourage them to make transactions because of the variety of offers provided through these digital coupons.
Types of Digital Coupons That Can Be Offered
1. Downloadable Coupons
This type of coupon can be accessed by customers wherever they are. They just download it from your company website, or they can get it via email or social media. Most of these coupons can also be accessed via the customer’s mobile phone.
2. Mobile Coupons
Typically these coupons are used by e-commerce that has integrated a mobile app into its operations by offering mobile-only coupons to drive further sales.
3. Coupon Codes
The increasing popularity of e-commerce in recent years has triggered the emergence of digital coupons in the form of coupon codes. This form of coupons is faster than downloading coupons and easier for customers to complete at the point of sale. Usually, these coupon codes consist of a unique combination of numbers and letters of the brand.
4. Automatic Discount
Discounts applied automatically at checkout are gaining popularity as consumers don’t have to do anything to receive the discount. This works well for e-commerce companies because online retailers attract customers with discount offers.
What to Look For When Using Digital Coupons?
1. Digital Coupon Type
The first thing you should pay attention to when you want to use digital coupons as your marketing strategy is the type. You can choose to apply the type of coupon that suits your business, target customer to the discount model or offer that you will provide through the digital coupon.
2. Digital Coupon Requirements
Providing clear and uncomplicated terms will increasingly make customers want to use the digital coupon. For example, to get a discount from the digital coupon, the customer must make a transaction of a certain nominal value, or within a certain period of time. Don’t forget to include the validity period of using the digital coupon.
3. Brand Recognition
In addition to the factors in the voucher itself, you also need to pay attention to what kind of reputation your business brand image is known to the general public. This also determines the success or failure of using digital coupons as your marketing strategy. Simply put, if there’s a business that many people don’t know about, or may have a bad reputation for, your customers will be less likely to use your digital coupons, even if the coupons you offer are quite large.
4. Tracking Analytics and Measurement
If you start running massive digital coupons without monitoring, you will not be able to measure the success or failure of your digital coupons. Therefore, every digital coupon distribution must use analytics and measurement tools to help you see who used the digital coupon, when and where they did it. The data from this tracking can also be used as a consideration when you want to use the next digital coupon to make it more optimal.
Benefits of Using Digital Coupons
The use of digital coupons has many benefits, both from the business side and end-users . From the end-user side , it is certainly very interesting to note because the offers provided through digital coupons are usually very large compared to offers through other channels. In addition, when accessing or exchanging it is quite easy.
Meanwhile, from the business side, digital coupons clearly provide quite high revenue because the offers look more tempting to customers. While the costs incurred by you are considered efficient and efficient because they are distributed via digital.
Another benefit that you can get when you use digital coupons is that you can connect and integrate with the business channels that you own. There is also an analytics and measurement feature that will control and measure the spread of your digital coupons, so you can find out the most effective channel of your promotion.
