Coupons can be a powerful driver in closing business with your shoppers. Whether offered as part of a marketing campaign, an individually-negotiated contract or simply as a way to maintain engagement with your install base, they are a controllable, trackable resource for accelerating revenue.

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Basic Usage 


The standard pattern for coupons is to simply use them as part of a marketing campaign: provide the coupon code on, say, an email or print piece, and offer shoppers the opportunity to make their purchase at a discount.

This drives product revenue volume, as it makes your products more affordable; but protects the list price by making it clear this is a limited time offer.

You'll want to be sure to limit the number of times your coupon can be used: once a coupon gets 'loose' on the Internet, it can be distributed very quickly all around the world, so you don't want to give up more of your revenue than you need to to capture the desired volume.

Customer Engagement Usage 


Several vendors have told us that a great way to build a sustainable long-term relationship with your customers is to provide a coupon at the conclusion of a purchase. So, for instance, once somebody buys one of your products, you offer them a coupon for, say, 30% off anything else on the site for the next 90 days or so, ending on a specific date.

To achieve this, simply create the appropriate coupon, then add the offer language into the Last Page HTML section of your BuyNow page. Remember, that section can accept any HTML that you choose to put into it, and the output can be positioned either before or after the <#CONTENT#> tag (which carries the Order information). So creating a graphic and using it here is a great way of ensuring that your customer notices, and makes a note of, the coupon.

Once you've supplied the coupon, you also now have a 'hook' for future marketing campaigns: use the Newsletter feature of the Plimus platform to send an email once a month to shoppers who bought within that month reminding them that they have the coupon and telling them of all the great stuff they can get with it! The newsletter feature can be integrated into your Buy Now page set up to offer a generic time limited offer that can be used just once to each customer.

Affiliate Tracking Usage 


The Plimus system ensures affiliates are credited with relevant sales through the use of URL strings and cookies. However, if you want to go another step further, you can do so with Coupons. Simply create a coupon specific to a given affiliate, then provide that code to the affiliate. When the affiliate markets your product in conjunction with that coupon, they receive credit for the sale.

This has the potential for abuse, of course. If the affiliate publishes the coupon code widely, they may receive credit for sales driven by other affiliates where shoppers have found the coupon code independently. However, so long as you define the number of times a coupon may be used, your exposure is completely limited. Nonetheless, other affiliates may become dissatisfied, so it is generally recommended that, if you use Coupons to track affiliates, you provide codes to each and every affiliate so they have an equal opportunity to drive revenue-producing business.

Upgrade Usage 


Another way vendors use Coupons to help grow their revenues is to use them for upgrades. In order to do so, simply create a Coupon for which the valid codes are actually the license keys that have been distributed to your current users.

Then, on your contracts, change the Coupon text to something along the lines of "Current Customers - get a 70% discount to upgrade by simply entering your license key here!" - and they are off to the races.

It's worthwhile adding a banner of some kind to the page using the First Page HTML field in the BuyNow setup - you can not only move current customers through the process quickly, you also reduce the number of inquiries you get from customers trying to work out how to get their discount!

However you use coupons, you know they're going to have a marked impact, so long as you can get them into the hands of your prospects and customers. Don't miss the opportunity to boost revenues with temporary offers, then build long-term relationships with your newly-grown install base.