Tag Archives: coupon codes

We Want YOU… to offer a military discount

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It all started with just one question. “Wouldn’t it be cool if every business gave military discounts or special offers?”  That one question spawned a series of other questions like, “Well, why don’t retailers offer military discounts?” and “What would make it easier for small businesses to create special offers for members of the Armed Forces?” We try to stay solution-focused around here, so we came up with an answer.

We’re giving away our active duty verification solution for free. Yep, free. What does having a free verification solution enable retailers to do (other than offer an everyday discount like Fathead’s)?

  • Offer discounts to active duty military during Memorial Day weekend or for the week of Veteran’s day.
  • Give active military coupon codes for free shipping to APO addresses.
  • Create a special sweepstakes or contest especially for active duty military.
  • Include printable coupons for free popcorn or soda on a custom thank you page when verified military purchase tickets online to your events.

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It’s Not Too Late Yet: 7 Ways to Pull Off a Cyber Monday Promotion

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Like it or not, it’s that time of year again. Mischievous elves and sleepy looking Santas are starting to sneak onto the shelves of retail stores alongside Halloween’s witches, goblins, and ghouls. In a few short weeks stores will start piping in Jingle Bells in an attempt to force us to feel festive and start working on those holiday shopping lists.  If you’re an e-retailer who is on the ball, you’ve already got November 26th, 2012 circled in red on your calendar, and you started your holiday marketing campaign planning way back in July. If not, don’t panic. There’s still time to pull off a Cyber Monday campaign that will cause your web traffic and revenue to spike.

Cyber Monday may have first entered the vocabulary of marketers and e-commerce retailers as early 2005, but it’s really just in the last couple of years that mainstream Americans have started to sit up and take notice of the sales and savings they can find online the first Monday after Thanksgiving and Black Friday. In 2010, according to comScore, shoppers spent over $1 billion online on Cyber Monday, making it the single biggest shopping day of the year, and last year they spent even more. The National Retail Federation released its 2012 holiday forecast last week, and they’re predicting that sales will increase 4.1% year over year to $586.1 billion, which makes it seem entirely possible that this year’s Cyber Monday sales will be bigger than ever.

If you don’t have the staff, inventory, bandwidth, or margins in place to plan a Cyber-Monday blow out, you can still plan a little something special for the big day.

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SheerID + Magento= Instant Marketing Fun

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Here at SheerID, we’re big fans of keeping things easy. That’s why we’ve designed SheerID’s verification plug-in to be simple for developers to integrate into any ecommerce site. Don’t get our tech guru going on the benefits of turn-key ecommerce plug-ins, developer-friendly SDKs, RESTful API architecture, or reducing the overhead of custom integrations (and please don’t ask me to explain what half those terms mean, that’s one of the many reasons we keep him around).

We knowSheerID Verify is on Magento Connect we’re not the only ones who value simplicity. One of the reasons Magento is currently the most searched for, and one of the most popular, ecommerce platforms out there is because Magento found a sweet spot- their platform combines lots of features and flexibility with easy installation. And that’s why SheerID is excited to announce that our Magento extension- SheerID Verify- is now available in Magento Connect, Magento’s Extension Marketplace.

I know I’m a little bit biased, but as a marketer, SheerID’s plug-in for Magento gives me goose bumps. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some awesome IT teams; I’ve got no complaints about my former co-workers. But I’ve also experienced the roller coaster ride that is the IT development process way too many times. Does this sound familiar?

 

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Oh Those Pesky Coupon Code Sites

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We totally understand why you feel the need to offer coupon codes. Really, we get it. We’ve read the same survey results you have, with titillating stats like:

•    74% of shoppers search multiple online coupon sources every week, and many spend up to an hour shopping around for the best deals
•    55% of online shoppers say they use online coupons
•    66% of shoppers project that they will use one in the next 12 months
•    Nearly 30% say they use them for 50% of their online purchases
•    Online shoppers expect to save 30% more in the next year through increased coupon code usage

And we’re sure you know as well as we do about all those conglomerate sites out there that do nothing but compile lists of coupon codes, right?

We’re talking about sites like…
retailmenot.com
couponmountain.com
couponcollie.com
coupontsunami.com
couponcodesaving.com
coupongreat.com
couponmom.com
hotcouponworld.com
couponnetwork.com
savings.com
coupontrade.com

The list could go on and on.

You probably already realize a large percentage of your customers pause before they click “order now” or “submit” to go search these helpful coupon sites and see if they can find an active coupon code they can use to get a discount on their order. Some of you actually incorporate coupon codes into your marketing strategy, purposely creating codes that you want to go viral Pretty smart.

But did you also realize that many of these coupon collectives also run PPC (pay-per-click) ads on their sites? If you’re not careful, your ads could end up running right next to your pilfered promo codes. Now your existing customer is going to click on your ad, coupon code in hand, ready to save money on an order they would have paid full price for. Ouch. You got stung twice- not only did you have to give that customer a discount for using the coupon code, you also upped your ad spend when they clicked on your PPC ad on the coupon site.

Bummer.

Let’s turn that frown upside down and try to stay solution-focused here.

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Follow Me On Twitter!

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Image by http://thedesignsuperhero.com/

It might not seem like much of a big deal now, but concentrating a large part of your marketing in the social media platforms these days is not the unique and scary concept it once was. Everyone from the mom and pops to the huge Fortune 500’s are embracing Twitter and Facebook these days, but there are still stumbling blocks to be found in this newest marketing space.

After years of scrambling to show ROI… well, to even define ROI in any kind of standardized way that matters, savvy marketers are using social media as it was most likely originally intended; to engage with existing customers and expose their brand to new ones.

According to an article found on MarketingCharts.com, “This year, 2 in 5 (merchants) are measuring success through sales, a more than 20% drop from 52.7% last year. Overtaking sales in popularity this year is the number of participants in special promotions, which is now being used as a metric by 44.9% of merchants, up from 36.6% last year.”

Don’t get me wrong, using sales as a success metric will always be important, but in the social media marketing world, it’s now sharing space with more squishy metrics like “follows” and “RT’s.”

One of the more popular promotions I’ve seen lately is the “follow us on Twitter for a special code” promo. The special can be anything from a few dollars off an event ticket to $$’s off an online retail purchase. But for all the usage of these types of “follow us” promotions, there are many things that can go wrong when you use them.
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Best Practices for Holiday Promotions

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I am not one of those people who whine that holidays are getting too commercialized. I look forward to the opportunity to stock up on red and pink potholders, dish towels, and place mats festooned with hearts every Valentine’s Day. And although I personally refuse to play Christmas music before I’ve carved pumpkins for Halloween, who am I to judge shop owners and CEO’s of big box stores who disagree. So of course I celebrated Earth Day this past weekend by recycling my dusty electronics and planting a few new native plants in my garden.

However, as much as I heart holidays, even I get peeved when the barrage of marketing mumbo jumbo surrounding our most cherished celebrations doesn’t ring true. Marketers have to walk a fine line when Earth Day, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Veteran’s Day roll around. You want to participate, create mutually beneficial partnerships, and support causes you truly care about. You don’t want to seem like you’re using a cause to manipulate your customers into giving you their money.

Let’s use Earth Day as a case study in what to do and what not to do. Anyone can give out free reusable shopping bags or free coffee to anyone who brings their own cup (although I think that was pure marketing genius when Starbucks did it years ago!) It’s time to take a look at what else was going on this Earth Day, and see what lessons we can learn.

1.    Pick a tie-in that makes sense for your brand. For example:

  • All Energy Star appliances are 10% of at Lowe’s through April 23. Well, that just makes sense. 10% is a little stingy, but the promotion itself is clear and logical.
  • The Body Shop chose Earth Day to launch its new “Wood Positive” initiative to plant and protect more trees than it uses. Excellent timing.
  • Walgreens already sells eco-friendly products. To let customers know these products are available at Walgreens.com, they offered 20% off these select products with a coupon code, 20NATURAL. Simple, effective, and oh-so trackable.

Sometimes, simpler is better.

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With great deals, comes great responsibility.

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According to a report from Coupons.com, “digital coupon users shop more frequently and spend more heavily, at almost 50% more annually, than the average shopper.”

If you aren’t immediately trying to figure out how to uptick your coupon code use on your website after reading that, you might be in the wrong business.

“But wait”, I hear you say, “When we try and offer digital coupons, the results are painful!” Yes, coupon codes these days can go viral within minutes of being published, and the customer response to a really compelling code can break a website or more tragically, an entire business.  Some of you actually want your coupons to go viral, but the problem with just flinging the discount out there and hoping for the best? You lose the ability to target the market you want to reach. The pain of that ROI can reach crazy levels. So it’s not just about protecting the coupon codes so that they go to the right people. It’s just as important to protect them so that the right people are the only ones who use them, and you can track them.  Am I right?

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