Discount Code Strategies That Will Motivate Your Customers

The US eCommerce market is predicted to grow dramatically, by as much as 53.79% from now to 2029.¹ With competition so fierce it’s even more essential to motivate customers to complete their purchases, and not get distracted by the rest of the world wide web. If you don’t give customers the incentive they need to purchase, they’ll go somewhere else!

So how can you gain an edge over the competition and motivate your customers to come back?

The answer is in providing discounts that are personalised and useful to your customers! In this article, we’ll cover the many discount code strategies that you can implement to help encourage your customers to buy from you.

Suggested reading: Download “The Ultimate Guide to Using Promo Codes” to discover how using promo codes, discount vouchers, and coupons effectively can elevate your marketing efforts.

Personalisation is key to converting customers

With the number of websites offering vouchers and deals increasing every day, consumers are always on the hunt for the best bargains. That’s why it’s becoming more difficult than ever to ensure customers use your discount codes. You need to do everything you can to encourage a purchase, and that means personalising your discounts.

As the capabilities for personalisation in the buyer’s journey increases, so do the expectations for it. Personalisation cannot be underestimated as an incentive. When paired with creative discount code strategies they form a killer combination for enticing new customers and increasing customer loyalty.

Why do customers prefer personalised shopping experiences?

Rather than simply pushing random discounts their way, personalising a customer’s shopping experience means you’re appealing to what they truly want or need. By adjusting your messaging, and the discount you offer, you can ensure customers have an incentive to buy. The stats appear to back this up, revealing that 81% of customers prefer companies that offer them a personalised experience.²

Tip: In order to create a truly personalised experience for your customers you need to be able to analyse their buying behaviours and preferences. A specialist promotion engine can provide you with a way to track metrics and gather invaluable insights.

3 ways to ensure your customers’ receive a personalised experience

1. Use exit intent pop-up codes: These are applied when a user attempts to navigate away from a page, convincing them to stay with personalised discounts and codes, based on the type of user, and webpage they’re visiting.

2. Send personalised promotional codes via email: When a customer abandons their shopping cart you can use personalisation, by emailing them directly to remind them that they haven’t completed a purchase. You can include a coupon code with a personalised discount based on their basket of products, or basket value, to help motivate them to buy.

3. Use unique, single-use codes: To make things feel even more personal, provide purchasers with their own unique single-use promo codes. This ensures that customers know this discount is exclusive to them, and is a reward for them being a loyal customer. A promotion experience engine can help you generate unique codes automatically, and give you the ability to analyse these processes.

Ultimately, personalisation is key to encouraging your customers to spend more, complete their purchases, and return to you as a loyal consumer. Using single-use, exclusive, discount codes will reward only deserving customers, prevent code misuse, and allow you to implement creative discount code strategies that will motivate your customers.

Let’s get into some of these strategies…

Don’t let customers abandon their shopping carts

In an age where digitally informed consumers know they can afford to be fickle, shopping cart abandonment is a huge issue. In the fourth quarter of 2023, approximately 77% of orders on mobile devices were not completed, with seven in 10 carts abandoned on tablets.³

That’s a lot of lost revenue in carts that could easily have gone to checkout. Discount codes can be used in a number of ways to get indecisive customers (whether new or existing) off the fence.

Why do customers abandon their shopping carts? Usually, it’s because they think that they can get a better deal elsewhere. Users also abandon their shopping carts if they have a long or confusing checkout experience.

How can discount promotion codes lure shoppers back?

Discount codes, by their very definition, assure customers that they get a special rate that’s just for them. And when they receive these via email, they know that the codes are not available to just anyone.

Discount codes can build value in your brand, strengthen existing customer relationships and increase their likelihood of shoppers returning to you - at the expense of your competitors.
What’s more, when you invest in promotion software to create unique, single-use discount codes, you can be assured that your discounts won’t be vulnerable to misuse.
By using a specialist promotion engine you can also track how your individual discount code campaigns are performing, and adjust them accordingly to improve customer conversion.

Tip: Promotion experience platform Uniqodo provides you with a way to personalise your shoppers’ experiences. You can apply codes automatically at checkout, with the option to prefill forms for customers too - making checkout as seamless as possible - and reducing your risk of cart abandonment.

Use rare discounts to incentivise

If customers receive too many promo codes that last a long time, they know they have the luxury of time and choice, meaning they are less likely to complete purchases. But utilising the tactic of scarcity marketing encourages decisive action and prevents indecisive customers from dragging their feet.

With the right promotional experience software, you can create promo codes with a greater sense of urgency, which assures customers that they’ll get better deals if they buy now. If they wait too long the deal of a lifetime will be gone forever. Promo codes that lend themselves well to scarcity marketing include:

Expiring promo codes

Customers will be more likely to use promo codes when they know they only have a limited window in which to use them. A powerful promotion experience software allows you to create discount codes with finite lifetimes of your choice. They can last for 24 hours, or even as little as a few minutes. For best results, you could even try A/B testing expiring promo codes of different lengths to see which is most effective.

Expiring codes offer you a great way to motivate customers, whether they take the form of email links, or even sporadic overlays on your website.

Diminishing discounts

Diminishing discounts reward customers who take quick and decisive action. Those who wait to weigh up their options may still get a discount on your products or services, but they won’t benefit as much as the “early birds”.

An example might be to offer a 20% discount to customers who respond to an email or social media post within 10 minutes. Those who respond within 10-20 minutes will get a 10% discount while those who respond within 20 minutes to half an hour will only get 5%.

This is a great way to encourage fast and decisive conversions from indecisive customers, or those who have wandered away from you.

Tailor promo codes to the needs of the customer

For better or worse, we live in an era where your customers have already seen every slick marketing gimmick under the sun. They’re no longer satisfied with a “one-size-fits-all” promotions approach. To really incentivise your customers discounts need to be tailored to their needs, or to their previous purchases and interactions with the brands they use.

Nearly nine in 10 millennials and 85% of Gen Z shoppers say they’re interested in receiving personalised deals. These are statistics you underestimate at your peril!⁴

Fortunately, the right software can give you the inside track, and make it easy to generate personalised discounts with minimum effort. With the help of a promotion engine you can create single-use promo codes, and generate discounts for shoppers based on items they have bought (or even viewed) and show them related products they might enjoy.

This software can also help you automate how you change the message of a promo offer so you can offer a diversity of discount code strategies and ensure customers come back to your site.

Case Study: Tui - Second Purchase Incentive

The Problem: In a fiercely price-competitive marketplace the holiday provider was struggling with customer loyalty.

The Solution: Uniqodo helped TUI deliver unique tailored discount codes to customers based on their previous buying behaviours. These codes were attached to the customers’ confirmation emails, so they could click through directly to the site to redeem them, and the codes were also shown when customers logged into their account.

Results: A 62.22% uplift in redemptions, ensuring Tui’s customers stayed loyal to the brand.

Use promotional codes to surprise customers and show how much you care

An example of using discount codes creatively is to offer them surprise discounts. A discount that the recipient doesn’t expect is perhaps one of the most potent. It’s a way to show them just how much you value their custom, while adding revenue to your bottom line.

For instance, you might want to offer a customer a special discount for their birthday, or on the anniversary of their first purchase (and the start of their relationship with your brand). This uses information that customers have already given to you voluntarily, so you don’t have to worry about coming across as intrusive — you’re just bringing customers that all-important personal touch.

Tip: New regulations mean that you can no longer rely on third-party data to help you personalise your campaigns. A powerful promotion software, however, can help you gather and analyse your all-important first-party data, so you can create a tailored promotional strategy going forward.

Surprise discounts are a fun way to gamify the shopping experience, which brings us very neatly to…

Making online shopping a game

By making shopping more fun and enjoyable for the customer. - for example, turning discounts into games - you can engage customers, motivate them to buy, and give your brand a USP that your competitors don’t offer.

Ways to do this include:

Gamification of referrals

You can make a game of encouraging existing customers to refer their friends, family and work colleagues to your business. Every time they do, both they and the customer they refer get a unique discount code for their next purchase.

You can even provide greater discounts for customers who refer more people to you. These discounts can be automated with single-use promo codes to ensure that the exclusivity of the codes are kept intact, showing you value your loyal customers, while also preventing the codes from being misused. Everybody wins!

Mystery rewards

We all want to take a peek inside the mystery box! And by offering mystery rewards, you can pique the interest of lapsed customers, while also adding the element of gamification. When utilising mystery discounts, it’s important to have clearly defined parameters, so that customers know that the “game” isn’t rigged against them.

For example,“win 5% or 25% off everything” is a pretty appealing call to action. Shoppers will be enticed by the prospect of a 25% discount, but they won’t feel cheated if they get 5%. Plus, this strategy will leave you with a perfectly manageable 0% or 15% hit to total sales, which is easily offset by the potential rewards.

Utilise influencer marketing to gain valuable affiliates

With over 60% of the world currently using social media it's a medium you cannot ignore.⁵ When you know which social platforms your target audience is using, you can leverage the influencers whose opinions matter to them.

And make no mistake, influencers’ opinions matter! Especially if you’re targeting a cash-rich younger market. Gen Z is onboard with influencers with nearly two thirds following them, and 50% saying they trust their recommendations.⁶

Identifying the influencers that matter to your customers and giving them their own single-use promo codes can prove a huge boon to your campaign. It entices influencers to introduce their following to your brand (they usually get an incentive for every referral they generate) and gives their following a special discount just for them. The affiliation between your brand and theirs will serve as a seal of approval to their loyal following.

Boost your discount code strategies: Partner with a powerful promotion experience platform

All of these discount strategies can prove effective in motivating customers who have either lapsed or are dragging their feet when it comes to converting. With so many consumers expecting discounts, you simply can’t afford to not give them what they want, especially in an increasingly competitive online market.

Discount codes can bring new customers to your brand while ensuring the loyalty of the already converted. It’s just a case of making sure that you have the right tools and the right strategies to implement these discounts effectively.

Why Uniqodo?

Uniqodo is a promotion experience platform designed to help you mitigate your risk and ensure that your campaigns are profitable. Our software will ensure that your codes aren’t misused in any way so that you won’t wind up giving discounts to people you don’t intend to… saving you a significant amount of money.

Uniqodo’s software also allows you to partner with sites like UNiDAYS, and Next Jump, to help increase brand awareness with your codes in a way that is still within your control.

With our specialist promotion engine at your disposal, you can not only generate single-use promo codes, but track their efficacy, and use A/B testing to see which strategies work best. Then you can get creative with the discounts you offer.

Uniqodo’s software integrates seamlessly with your CRM and other eCommerce tools, to automate the process of bringing unique discount codes to your customers when they are most predisposed to take action on them. This should see them coming back to shop from you time and again.

To find out more about how Uniqodo can help you create unique, secure, and effective promotional campaigns, book a demo with us today.