Subscribe to the Blog

Written By Julius Somoye
7 minute read

In the world of fast-paced eCommerce, it is essential to motivate customers to complete 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.

 

Personalisation is key to converting customers

 

With the number of websites offering vouchers and deals increasing, potential customers are always on the hunt for the best deal possible. Therefore, it is more difficult than ever to ensure your customers use the discount codes you provide. You need to do everything you can to encourage a purchase, and that means personalising 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, and when paired with creative discount code strategies, they form a killer combination for enticing new customers and increase customer loyalty. 

By personalising a customer’s shopping experience, you’re appealing to what they truly want or need, rather than pushing random discounts on them that won’t benefit them. By adjusting your messaging and the discount you offer — even analysing a customer’s purchase history to help do this effectively — you can ensure that customer has an incentive to buy. And the stats back this up — 59% of customers claim that their purchasing habits are noticeably impacted if they have experienced personalisation.

An example of this is when a customer abandons their shopping cart. By using personalisation, you can email them directly to remind them that they haven’t completed a purchase, and even offer a coupon code with a personalised discount based on their basket of products or basket value to help motivate them to buy. 

To make this feel even more personal, provide them with their own unique single-use promo code, to ensure they feel this discount is exclusive to them, and is a reward for them being a loyal customer. This will also make sure that these codes won’t be leaked and used by unintended parties. On top of these benefits, unique code generators can also help automate and analyse these processes — but more on that later. 

Ultimately, personalisation is key to encouraging your customers to spend more, complete purchases and return to you as a loyal consumer. Single-use promo code generators can help make this personalisation feel exclusive, prevent code misuse and implement creative discount code strategies to motivate your customers. Let’s get into some of these strategies… 

Personalised marketing - eBook

 

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 2019. In fact, the global average cart abandonment rate for 2019 currently sits at 75.6%. For mobile shoppers, who have more demands on their time and attention, abandonment rates are even higher. 

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. 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 customers’ relationship with you and increase their likelihood of returning to you at the expense of your competitors. 

What’s more, when you invest in software to create unique, single-use discount codes, you can be assured that your discounts won’t be vulnerable to misuse. The same software can even help track how this tactic performs using built-in analytics tools. This means you can check how your individual discount code campaigns are performing and adjust them accordingly to improve customer conversion.

 

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 fickle customers from dragging their feet.

With the right software, you can create promotional codes with a greater sense of urgency which assures customers that they’ll get better deals when they buy now. But if they wait too long to think about it, 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. The right software will allow 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. 

They’re 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.

promo codes distribution

 

Tailor promo codes to the needs of the customer

 

For better or for worse, we live in an era where your customers have already seen every slick marketing gimmick under the sun. They are no longer satisfied with one-size fits all promotions. They expect discounts which are tailored to their needs or their previous purchases and interactions with the brands they use. 

79% of consumers say they are only likely to engage with a brand if it offers discounts tailored to their past interactions. That’s a statistic you underestimate at your peril!

Fortunately, the right software can give you the inside track, making it easy to generate personalised discounts with minimum effort. By using automated tools that create single-use promo codes, it’s easy to generate discounts for shoppers based on items they have bought (or even viewed) before and related products they might enjoy. 

This software can also help you automate how you change the message of a promo offer, which can go a long way towards diversifying discount code strategies and ensure customers come back to your site. 

An example of this includes surprise discounts. The kind of discount that the recipient doesn’t expect is perhaps the most potent. Offer customers surprise discounts and you can show them just how much you care while bringing value to your brand. 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.

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

 

Make online shopping a game again

 

Online shopping used to have a certain novelty value, but today’s online retailers have no such luxury. Still, that doesn’t mean that online shopping can’t be made more fun and enjoyable for the customer. Turning discounts into games engages your customers, making them more likely to buy and giving your brand a USP that your competitors don’t offer.

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 in tact, 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

 

Social media is here to stay. Almost half the population of the planet are active social media users. 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. In fact, millennial consumers trust their favourite social influencers implicitly, with 40% of millennials confessing that their favourite YouTube personalities understand them better than their friends.

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.

 

Effective discount code strategies start with the right tools

 

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. 75% of consumers expect discounts, so you simply can’t afford to not give them what they want, especially in an increasingly competitive online market. 

Discount codes can potentially 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.

To mitigate your risk and ensure that these campaigns are profitable, it’s vital to ensure that your codes aren’t misused in any way.  Otherwise you could wind up giving discounts to people you don’t intend to… And that won’t be cheap for you!

This is why it’s so important to have single-use promo codes that are immune to the risk of leakage or misuse. You can even partner with certain sites like UNiDAYS and Next Jump to help increase brand awareness with these codes in a way that is still within your control. 

With the right automation tools, you can not only generate single-use promo codes, but you can track their efficacy and use A/B testing to see which strategies work best and get creative with the discounts you offer. They can even integrate with your CRM tools to automate the process of bringing unique discount codes to your customers when they are most predisposed to take action on them. 

By implementing these strategies and using analytics tools to measure how they perform, you can ensure customers have a reason to keep coming back to you time and time again.  

New call-to-action

 

Get our Latest Insights