In the modern business landscape, digital coupon marketing is an essential tool for driving customer engagement and increasing sales. With the right coupon software and systems, businesses can efficiently manage and distribute coupons, track customer usage, and gain valuable insights into consumer behavior. But with so many digital coupon vendors available, how do you choose the best digital coupon software and systems for your business? This guide will help you navigate through the key factors to consider.
Understand Your Business Needs
Before diving into the vast array of digital coupon solutions, it’s crucial to understand your specific business needs. Consider the following questions:
- How will your customers receive their coupons (e.g., via email, social media, in-app notifications)?
- Is POS integration required for redemption? Will you be the only one redeeming your coupons, or will other businesses need to do this?
- Do your coupons need to be single-use, or is multi-use acceptable?
- What kind of reporting and analytics do you require?
- Does data need to be exchanged with other systems?
- Approximately how many coupons per month will you need to distribute?
Answering these questions will help you narrow down the features you need in a digital coupon system.
Coupon Distribution
One important thing to think about is exactly how your customers will receive their coupons. There are a number of potential models to consider. Here are some of the most popular:
- Upon customer request (on-demand): In this case, a customer will make a specific request for the coupon, such as texting in a keyword or scanning a QR code to obtain the coupon.
- Upon sign-up for a marketing list: The customer will automatically receive a “welcome” coupon when they sign up for your marketing list. These are typically delivered via SMS and/or email.
- Manually triggered by a store employee after a purchase: A customer may make a purchase, and you may want a store employee to trigger the delivery of a coupon to that specific customer after the purchase.
- As part of a marketing “blast” to your marketing list: You may already have an email list or text message list and want to distribute the coupon to members of that list on a periodic basis.
- In return for a fee: Perhaps you want to deliver a series or “book” of coupons in return for a fee.
How Much Coupon Security is Required
At CodeBroker, we often think of the notion of “offers” vs “coupons.” An “offer” is something like “Buy 100 pizzas get one free.” As the business owner, I would accept that offer all day long for every customer who asked for or showed a coupon for that offer. In contrast, a “coupon” is something like anyone who walks through my front door with this coupon receives a $10 bill (extreme example for illustration purposes).
In the case of the “coupon,” it is critical that a) the number of offers distributed is very limited and b) each offer can only be redeemed one time. Otherwise, the offer could go viral and be VERY expensive for the store owner. Where you are on this spectrum will help to determine how much coupon security is required, whether or not the coupons need to be single-use, and what the options are for customer redemption.
Coupon Security Considerations
This gets back to the notion of “offers” vs “coupons”. Do you need to ensure that your coupons can only be used once? Do you need to prevent them from going viral?
Depending upon the value of your coupons, there may be a variety of answers to this question. If there is concern about customers using the digital coupons more than once, how confident are you that multi-use can be prevented and how secure do the digital coupons need to be?
You should also consider whether you require coupons that automatically expire on a certain date, or if you need “rolling” expiration dates whereby the coupon expiration date is some period of time after the customer received it (since different customers will receive coupons on different days, you need the expiration dates to auto adjust).
You may also want to consider how secure the digital coupon distribution offer management process needs to be in order to prevent customers from obtaining more than one coupon. If your employees are manually delivering coupons after a purchase, or you are sending coupons to a marketing list, then this may be less of an issue. However, if customers are clicking to request your coupon on a social media or other website, then you may need to be very careful to ensure that customers can only obtain one coupon and not access your entire “stack” of digital coupons.
In addition, do your reporting requirements require you to track an individual’s use of their coupons? If you need to track individual behavior or prevent coupons from being used more than once or going viral, then you will need to implement single-use coupons.
Who Will Be Redeeming the Coupons
There are really only two categories of answer here: a) Businesses that you own/control, or b) Third parties. If you own the business, you will have more flexibility on the best way to redeem the coupons.
How Will the Digital Coupons Be Redeemed
Digital coupon redemption can be a tricky subject, but here are a couple of key things to think about regarding digital coupon redemption.
- Can my employees (or 3rd party partners’ employees) use a mobile device to redeem coupons or do these coupons require POS integration?
- Are the digital coupons easy for my employee(s) or my 3rd party partners’ employee(s) to redeem?
- If a partner/3rd party is redeeming the coupons, do/will they need to be reimbursed for honoring the discount?
Analytics and Reporting
Robust analytics and reporting tools are vital for tracking the success of your digital coupon marketing campaigns. You will need to identify what coupon reports are critical for your business. For example, do you simply need to know the redemption rate of a particular coupon over a given period of time, or do you need to know at what location the coupon was redeemed (for reimbursement, etc.)?
Integration Capabilities
You will need to evaluate if any integration is required in order to distribute and redeem your coupons. You should consider whether any of the following systems are required to be integrated with your voucher platform of choice:
- Point of Sale (POS)
- CRM
- Website/eCommerce
- Mobile App
- Email Service Provider or Text Message Service Provider
The answers to the above questions typically depend on how you plan to distribute your coupons and what process will be used to redeem your coupons.
Distribution Volumes
Finally, you should consider how many coupons you will be distributing and redeeming over a period of time, as this will likely impact your costs. The more coupons you distribute and the more coupons that are redeemed, the higher your cost is likely to be.
Conclusion
Choosing the best digital coupon software and systems for your business involves careful consideration of your specific needs and the features offered by various platforms. By understanding your distribution methods, security requirements, redemption processes, and integration needs, you can select a solution that enhances your digital coupon marketing efforts.
With the right coupon software and systems, you can efficiently manage and distribute your digital coupons, ultimately driving customer engagement and boosting sales. Investing in a reliable voucher platform and working with reputable digital coupon vendors will ensure that your digital coupon distribution offer management is seamless and effective.