Mastering Coupons: A Guide to Coupon Management Systems

Brands are being forced to devise sophisticated online coupon and discount strategies as a result of the growing popularity of online shopping. Why? Brands have a one-of-a-kind chance to analyze customers’ purchase paths, engage users, and cultivate brand advocacy through the use of promo codes. And that’s just for starters.

However, brands must implement an efficient coupon management system in order to benefit from coupon marketing. A coupon management platform lets brands create, distribute, and monitor coupon campaigns across channels.

In this blog post, I’ll go over the essential features of a coupon management system, highlighting its benefits and essential components that make a coupon campaign a success. Using Delivery Hero’s brand as an example, I will show you how Voucherify with its range of coupon management features can become your springboard to success.

What is a system for managing coupons? A coupon management system is a digital platform that streamlines the process of offering discounts to customers, allowing brands to target specific customer segments and personalize coupon offers, while ensuring fraud prevention. What’s more, a suitable coupon management system provides valuable insights and analytics to measure the performance and ROI of coupon campaigns.

Since more than 80% of customers occasionally snoop around the web looking for discount coupons, investing in a robust coupon software becomes a no-brainer. However, how can you guarantee that a specific coupon management software will live up to your expectations? Should coupon management be developed internally? Of course, you can. However, why would you? The quest for developing logic for generating, managing, and tracking vouchers and discounts is undoubtedly not straightforward. Although small businesses might be able to rely on Excel sheets with codes, this strategy does not address the issue of scalability. As simple as it is – time is money. While building an in-house coupon solution definitely offers some unique benefits such as coverage of specific business use cases, it is also a fast-paced carousel of unexpected development work, annoying showstoppers, and negligence to take care of your core product or service.

The crux of the matter is that you can spend time, money, and resources to build an in-house solution that is sure to cover your use cases or save money and time with a market-ready coupon system that may or may not cover all of your requirements. This is why the proper audit is so vital before settling for a coupon provider.
Whether you build your coupon solution in-house or use a ready provider, you must ensure that your coupon management tool has the following features and capabilities. What are the main advantages of using software to manage coupons? A successful coupon management software offers several key benefits for brands and customers alike. The following are some significant benefits: Increased revenue and sales as a result of customers being drawn in by coupons Coupons encourage new customers to try products or services, thereby expanding the customer base and fostering customer retention. They also build customer loyalty, encouraging repeat purchases and long-term relationships.

‍Targeted marketing – promo codes enable personalized offers, allowing businesses to target specific customer segments and increase campaign effectiveness, allowing you to cut advertising costs in the long-run.

‍Data insights – coupon management systems provide valuable data on customer behavior, preferences, and campaign performance for data-driven decision making.

‍Inventory management – discounts help manage inventory by controlling demand, preventing stock shortages and facilitating the clearance of excess stock.
Must-have features of a successful coupon management system

You need two things to start developing your coupon strategy – objective and means to achieve it. With a market already saturated with technological tools for streamlining even the smallest business task, you are sure to find a dozen possible coupon management platforms out there. But before investing in one, you should consider the following must-have discount management system features.

1. Modifications to advanced coupons

 

A sound coupon management system should enable you to run highly-targeted and customized coupon campaigns across all marketing channels. You don’t want to offer open-for-all discounts that can be used an unlimited number of times by random visitors. Proper coupon customization starts with the discount value and expiry date, but the tweaking capabilities go far beyond that. Your voucher management software needs to keep up with your scale and be flexible enough to design multiple, diversified incentives for any segment and occasion.

There are several features that will let you do just that:
Flexible redemption rules based on multiple criteria, such as segments, order size, or cart content.
On top of a formula, multi-effect and dynamic discounts are calculated. Code customization options to make your promo codes user-friendly and secure from fraud.
Redemption limits per customer, order, campaign, and more.

Specific time limits and validity periods.

capabilities that fully reflect your branding under white labeling.

 

2. Scalability of pricing

 

The coupon management system should fit your business goals and long-term planning. Pricing regulations need to be easy to understand. This means that in the case of coupons, you pay for the number of operations performed, such as using codes. You can keep maintenance costs low and profits balanced at scale by following this straightforward rule. In an agile marketing field, even a well-designed promo campaign can bring unpredictable results. That’s why the usage-based pricing plan is even more critical. It allows you to start small, iterate, and gradually estimate the long-term strategy roll-out cost. You don’t want to end up with a large up-front investment, and your marketing goals only reached half-way, do you?

 

3. A/B testing and marketing automation

 

Marketing automation makes it possible to meet customers closer than ever before. If you don’t use automation software, even the most innovative coupon campaigns will never be able to compete with a modern e-commerce megacorp. How specifically does it support your promotion strategy? It helps you build the omnichannel coupon experience with:

 

coupons in emails and text messages that are tailored to the context of the message. Automatic coupon distribution at wholesale triggered by customers’ interactions with the brand (like changing location, abandoning the cart, new subscription, etc.).
Dynamic customer segmentation divides your audience based on the results of the current tracking. Before you launch any coupon campaign on a massive scale, you need to know which coupon ideas best fit your audience. A/B tests compare how different discount values and validation rules perform with specific customer segments. The point of A/B testing is to start with small campaigns and expand the ideas which convert best. This should be supported by your coupon management system, which should also display the test results so you can quickly identify patterns.

 

4. Delivery of coupons via any medium or device

 

While generating unique codes with custom redemption limits is problematic, delivering these codes to end-users poses another challenge that not all coupon management platforms can face. A sound coupon management system should combine the power of both personalization and dynamic segmentation, meaning that messages with coupon codes should be appropriately composed and carry a contextual discount.
Your system should also be aware of changes in customer segments and trigger the message with an incentive in the right context and time. Welcome coupons, deals for abandoned carts, exit intent offers, and re-engagement discounts are the most common uses for coupon codes.

 

5. Monitoring discount redemption

 

Coupon tracking is crucial to collect customer data and secure your promo codes against fraud. The data you collect is turned into measurable reports by effective coupon software, which ultimately leads to higher sales rates. Coupons are now much more than just codes and discounts. They are used to track customers’ behavior, which is later translated into segments. When selecting a coupon provider, look for monitoring options like the following: Unique codes that allow you to track every single coupon among dozens of generated campaigns.

Details about redemptions and delivery include when the code was given out and how it was given out (you can see who has redeemed a particular code and which delivery channels work best). Metrics and stats showing your campaigns’ real-time performance (like gift card balances, the total number of redemptions, or the most popular types of discount).

 

Remember that single features won’t ensure a data-driven marketing strategy. You can only get reliable clues from a coupon management system that follows a coupon throughout its entire lifecycle.

 

6. API-first coupon management system

With APIs, you can create software that works with your process and can be developed quickly. Try to count how many apps, service providers, and business tools you already use. None of them would be sufficient if not integrated to work together. This is why you need a coupon system with an API.
What is an API, you might be wondering. Well, to be very brief, API is a method of fast communication between separated databases. In the context of coupon campaigns, you can see API in action when a customer tries to redeem a discount code. The moment the code is entered, your store asks coupon software about the details of the code. Is it still operational? Is the customer eligible for the offer? Then, the answer (either positive or negative) comes back to your store, allowing or blocking the customer from claiming the offer.