Coupon Marketing Ideas: From Shoes to Digital Products, Sell More Using This Tip

Coupon marketing ideas are great, and I’m about to share some clever ones but I wanted to start off with a quick story to illustrate the power of coupons done right.

Last summer, as I was fully embracing my new identity as a mother… I started researching more comfortable shoes online.

Yes, I still like to rock some fancy high heels for a speaking gig or business event, but I wanted something that was more relaxed and functional while I was running around outside with my toddler.

I found a great site that had some cute moccasins, so I created an account and added them to my shopping cart.

But you see, like many of us… I wasn’t sure if I wanted them right away, and besides the baby woke up from her nap, so I closed down my browser.

Then something cool happened.

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The Fortune Is In The Follow Up

I got an email from this shoe company, and it had a picture of the shoes that I was considering, along with some great sales copy and a link back to the site.

That’s pretty great and it definitely kept the shoes on my mind. This wasn’t an expensive pair of shoes, and there was a lot on my mind already with releasing new software each month and entertaining a little one.

But then something really interesting happened.

I got another email, but this one offered free shipping on the pair of shoes if I ordered by a certain date. Still, that was great and while I was about to circle back and make my purchase, I got yet another email with a percentage off if I ordered by the end of the week.

With each subsequent email, I was so pleasantly surprised by their marketing that I told my husband over breakfast.

Finally, when that “discount on the exact pair of shoes I wanted” came in, I clicked buy. (I ended up getting two pairs in different colors, because their marketing follow-up was THAT good!)

Coupon Marketing Ideas: The Fortune Is In the Individual Follow-Up

One of the things that I’m a big fan of is what we call Individual Signals™ in AccessAlly. This is when you use people’s actions as a starting point to trigger the best follow up or automation sequence for them.

Imagine if that shoe company had sent me a promotion for boots or for purses or something completely unrelated to what I was looking at originally… It wouldn’t have gotten me off the fence. (And I wouldn’t be wearing these moccasins right now as I type this!)

And while we’ve always built in the ability to do tag-based automation inside of membership sites on WordPress, we took it one step further.

We built in the same kind of “abandoned cart individual coupons” that worked so well on me.

These are specific coupons or promotions that have a specific end date, and that are only going to work once for that person. Let’s take a closer look at it, in action!

Let’s take a look at some coupon marketing tips!

Individual Coupons For Abandoned Shopping Carts with AccessAlly

To set up one of these Individual Signals™ style coupons, you’ll want to be using the AccessAlly order forms.

These are fully mobile friendly 3-step order forms to take payments through your AccessAlly and Stripe integration or PayPal integration, and that can handle one-time orders or those with recurring payments or payment plans.

The first step asks a potential customer to fill in their name and email, when they click next they can fill in their order details and complete their purchase. This is also the page where they would enter a coupon code that they get from you.

Now let’s say that they get distracted (maybe they’re a busy parent, ahem!) and they don’t complete their order. It doesn’t mean that they don’t want to purchase, it just means that something came up before they could get their credit card from their wallet or maybe they thought they’d be back later.

In your CRM system (not sure which one to get started with – check out our CRM comparison guide), you’ll have a campaign that checks to see if the order is completed within 4 hours.

If an order doesn’t come through, you can kick-start the abandoned cart follow-up, and generate a one-time use special offer coupon.

This works the same in each email marketing platform, so the key here is just to write a few compelling emails that link back to your order form and talk up the product itself.

(Don’t have a CRM yet? Sign up for one of these here through our affiliate links: Discover Infusionsoft, Sign up for Ontraport, Take advantage of ActiveCampaign, Check out Drip, or Enjoy ConvertKit.)

You’ll use your CRM to design the special offer emails, and you can decide on the spacing and frequency of these emails in your follow-up campaign too.

Here’s an example of what this type of follow-up email might look like:

Obviously this is just an example, and when it comes to coupon marketing ideas the sky is the limit! You can use graphics, or keep things really simple with a plain text email.

You have full control with AccessAlly over what special offer you want to extend and for how long. For example, you might decide to reduce the price by a percentage or by a set amount.

Or, you might throw in a special bonus that they wouldn’t otherwise get. You also decide how many days this offer is valid for.

The big distinction with this AccessAlly coupon feature is that this is a one-time use coupon. Even if someone were to share it with their friends, as soon as someone uses it – it will no longer be valid.

This is great because it creates real scarcity, and a real reason for people to act now.

How You Can Get Started Building Your Own One-Time Use Coupon

If you’re already using AccessAlly for your WordPress membership platform, then you can get started by watching our tutorial videos and setting up your first coupon code.

If you’re not yet using AccessAlly for your membership site and want to take orders with PayPal and Stripe, then you’ll want to check it out.

I always like to recommend taking a look at our live and interactive demo site, where you can make changes and look at the set up interface too.

Or, just sign up for AccessAlly and get going!

The most important thing, whether you’re ready to use this marketing strategy or not, is that now you know what gets busy moms to buy shoes… Or, how you can keep your product top of mind and increase the number of sales you make on a regular basis.

I hope you enjoyed these coupon marketing ideas, and that this got your wheels turning for how to use discounts the right way in your business, too!