A promotions engine is a powerful tool able to help you craft and execute targeted and customised promotional campaigns. Using automation, advanced validation criteria, and flexible distribution parameters, you can go far beyond the promotional marketing capabilities of a CRM or eCommerce platform.
But how do you make sure that you invest in the right piece of software?
There are quite a few options on the market. To be honest, all of them provide functional outcomes. But there are differences, and depending on your exact needs, different tools will serve you better.
But, without further ado, let’s get started.
Uniqodo
Full disclosure: Uniqodo is our own platform — so we certainly believe it belongs at the top of this list. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only solution on the market. It’s simply the solution on the market that provides you with the most flexibility.
The stand out feature of Uniqodo is that we go above and beyond SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). We provide you with an off-the-shelf tool that delivers advanced promotional capabilities. However, that tool is backed up by on-demand consulting and development services that delivers bespoke onsite activation solutions. This means you can build promotional marketing campaigns tailored to your exact needs and experiment with what works for you, all with the help of our expertise guiding you and helping more with how to promote eCommerce products.
Although our “SaaS+” capabilities are why we stand out, Uniqodo’s “out-of-the-box” functionality is top-notch. You can:
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Control code usage: Single-use, unique codes put you in control. You can issue promotions to specific users, maintain a budget, and target your campaigns.
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Engage with third-parties: Uniqodo lets your partner marketing affiliates generate their own single-use codes within a permission-based system that leaves you in control.
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Deploy advanced validation criteria: Uniqodo allows you to create multiple promotion types, set up a range of multi-stage validation criteria, create diminishing/time-sensitive discounts, and even “gamify” your programme.
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Test and track outcomes: All results are captured and you can easily review the success of campaigns. You can even set-up A/B tests for messaging and promotions.
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Using a range of integration options (including Google Tag Manager, APIs, HTML widgets, and JavaScript), Uniqodo can be integrated and configured within a matter of hours — rather than days or weeks.
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Uniqodo’s broad capabilities make it a valuable solution for any ecommerce business. We are trusted by a number of global brands, including EE, Beauty Bay, and others. But, as we will get back to, the consulting and development half of our business arguably places us in a different category to our main competitors. With that said, it’s important to note that our product can be used as self-service SaaS. These out-of-the-box capabilities broadly align with the outcomes every other product on this list will deliver.
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Pricing model: Variable, depending on use
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Single-use unique codes: YES
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Promotion types: ALL
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Integrations: Any CRM or eCommerce platform
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Best use case: any business that retails online and wants to leverage promotions to drive acquisition, conversion and revenue. Even if you don’t use promotional codes in your checkout, we have solutions to help you use unique codes and activation strategies to drive business results.
Talon.One
Emerging in the marketplace in 2015, Talon.One, has grown to work with brands such as Ticketmaster and Mercedes Benz. The platform offers customers the ability to create campaigns based on their own data. The process begins with a simple integration of Talon.One’s flexible API configuration. From there, customers can promote their coupons, discounts, referral discounts and loyalty programs.
Talon.One has features such as code control, setting validation criteria and reporting capabilities. It includes the ability to integrate with third-party APIs, and the platform is able to handle unexpected load spikes or peaks. Talon.One automatically scales to meet the demands of its customer’s needs. In addition, automation and customisable attributes are available with all plan types.
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Pricing model: Variable, depending on use
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Single-use unique codes: YES
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Promotion types: ALL
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Integrations: Most CRMs and eCommerce platforms
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Best use case: B2B and B2C businesses
Voucherify
Positioned as a developer-friendly promotion engine, Voucherify entered the market in 2016. Some of the platform's largest customers include Bloomberg, Saatchi Art, and Bellroy. The API-first platform allows developers to integrate plugins and popular applications to build targeted campaigns.
A few notable features of the platform include setting advanced validation criteria, custom workflows with role-based access, flexible webhooks, and multi-use coupons. The platform claims to be enterprise-level ready with fast integration times.
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Pricing model: Variable, depending on needs
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Single-use unique codes: YES
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Promotion types: ALL
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Integrations: Most CRMs, eCommerce platforms, and mobile
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Best use case: Large businesses and enterprises
EagleEye
EagleEye is positioned as a digital marketing platform that has been on the market since 2003. Primarily working with hospitality and food clients, the platform offers the ability to connect with new customers, develop digital services, reward customer loyalty, and reward staff loyalty. The platform covers 80% of the food and beverage market.
With its years of development, the platform offers features such as digital promotions, code control, customer targeting at checkout, prepaid gift cards, and extended audience network. EagleEye is a powerful product for those who are looking to drive online to offline purchase and redemption as their platform can fully integrate into many POS systems.
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Pricing model: Variable, depending on use
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Single-use unique codes: YES
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Promotion types: ALL
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Integrations: Most POSs, CRMs and eCommerce platforms
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Best use case: Food and beverage, retail, and grocery businesses
Qixol
In 2014, Qixol joined the market as a cloud-based promotions management tool. The platform offers retailers the ability to maintain brick-and-mortar type promotions in an online eCommerce store. Qixol positions itself as a stand alone promotions engine.
The cloud-based architecture of Qixol allows it to offer features such as code control, advanced validation criteria, scalability, downtime elimination, and low level granular data storage. These features allow the platform to manage coupons, discounts, loyalty rewards, and more.
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Pricing model: Variable, depending on number of baskets
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Single-use unique codes: YES
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Promotion types: ALL
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Integrations: Most CRMs and eCommerce platforms
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Best use case: eCommerce brands, omni-channel businesses, and retailers
Should Uniqodo be on this list at all?
As we mentioned, Uniqodo goes beyond standard SaaS. Our product focuses on the outcomes that can be achieved by our clients, and we support our customers in any way that we can. In order to serve a range of needs, we offer bespoke development, consulting services, and promotions strategy.
While our out-of-the-box self-service solutions will still help you get where you want to go, we take your promotional campaigns to the next level by utilising our full-service capabilities.
Why SaaS+?
Fundamentally, you want a promotions engine because the native promotional marketing capabilities within your CRM or eCommerce platform are insufficient. As you continue to add capabilities, your expectations will continue to grow. The last thing you want is for your software procurement project to spiral into an in-house development project to improve the tool you bought. That’s why you didn’t build the tool in the first place.
Making sure that our customers can continue to customise and grow their promotional marketing strategy is exactly why we’ve expanded our service capabilities to match. We want you to deploy the right strategy — driving important business outcomes — unconstrained by internal resources.
What driving business outcomes looks like
The flexibility of bespoke promotional capabilities delivered by Uniqodo allows you to create sophisticated campaigns aligned with your specifics. A few examples are:
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Example 1: If unsold stock is taking a hit on your margins, Uniqodo’s software uses trading data to dynamically serve and adjust promotions in order to move distressed stock and protect revenues on higher-value products. These promotions can even be automated to pop up on your website, pushing potential consumers to these offers.
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Example 2: You can engage and attract new audiences with compelling offers that are 100% controlled, and cannot leak or be shared into places you didn't intend. This also makes it easier to partner with third-parties and generate unique, single-use codes for their audiences.
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Example 3: Personalise your promotions by tracking on-site actions to serve relevant and timely offers to customers based on product selection, search criteria or basket volumes. We can also monitor exit intent to capture data with personalised promotions — it doesn’t always have to be about a sale.
Our unique mix of consulting, development support, and self-service options provide a powerful alternative to other solutions on the market. Uniqodo is perfectly positioned to help you find value at every stage of your promotional campaign, which makes it an exceptional choice that is broadly different from any other options available.
Find a solution that delivers what you need
Your promotional campaign is only as successful as the tools you utilise. It’s important to consider your unique needs and understand which platform provides the comprehensive features that serve your specifications.
Not only should the tech you invest in today meet your current needs, they should also future proof your strategy and ensure that your promotional strategy is ready to be scaled. That’s why it’s vital you research thoroughly and consider all of your options to find a long-term tool that suits you.
If you have any questions about how Uniqodo can assist your organisation, please contact us today.
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