Lessons From Wikigains – Popular Coupon Marketing Methods To Avoid This Black Friday

This article has been prepared following an interview with Alex Papaconstantinou, founder of Wikigains, one of the UK’s oldest voucher sites. Coupon marketing is one of the most established methods of bringing new customers into a business. Its tactics have evolved significantly over time with the developments in technology.  Today, there is a distinct difference in the use and purpose of physical and digital vouchers, each type having very particular marketing benefits.

Black Friday is known as the biggest sale of the year with the highest distribution of coupons than any other day of the year. What matters to you, as a business owner or retailer, is to receive the highest possible return on investment using coupons. Therefore, this Black Friday you need to know the most effective ways of distributing your deals to maximise profits from your products.

In this article, we start with what seems to be the most popular coupon distribution method, but one you should probably avoid. Then we talk about two other methods that may give you a higher return on investment if done right.

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The Most Popular Coupon Distribution Method Retailers Should Avoid

[pullquote]Back in the late nineties, you would send an email to your list with a great offer and you would enjoy massive opening rates.[/pullquote] However, these days are long gone. Black Friday 2017 people will receive hundreds of emails from retailers and merchants. It is unlikely that your email will be opened.

“You may have the best deals in your newsletter but with consumers flooded with emails the opening rates will be abysmal and the conversion rates will be too small”, explains Alex from Wikigains. Email marketing may work if you have a very targeted audience and a very compelling offer. But sending out offers like “40% off men’s cosmetics” to a list of twenty thousand people won’t work.

Here are a couple of coupon distribution ideas that will not cost much and may give you higher conversion rates:

1. Wikigains Says Get Your Offers Published In Digital Media

If you are an e-commerce business the options for voucher marketing this Black Friday are really endless. The advantage of the digital option is that it is free. Here are 4 examples:

1. If you want to increase traffic to your website, then consider digital offers targeting your product pages. There are several options to publish your coupons codes. In the UK, these include voucher sites like Wikigains, VoucherCodes.co.uk, and VoucherCloud.
2. If you are running a local business, you can use local media websites to distribute your coupons.
3. Another option is using affiliates to promote your discounts on their websites, blogs or newsletters. Your discount offers may attract their readers and turn them into your customers.
4. Consider publishing an article, such as a product review, on your blog. Then promote your post on Facebook and let your followers know what offers you have in store for them. More about Social Media in the next paragraph.

2. Go Social

Social media present one of the best ways to distribute deals virally, largely because consumers share good offers with their friends by pressing a button. The assumption here is that you have already understood the reasons why you need to invest in your social presence and you have built a relationship with your followers.

On that assumption, you can leverage on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms and offer your followers and friends irresistible discounts. To increase the chances of getting new customers, you could try compelling promotions like “Refer a friend and get 40 % off”. Your friends will share the coupons with their friends, and ultimately you are sure to get new customers while keeping the existing ones.

Author Bio: Alex Papaconstantinou is a marketing expert with 20 years of experience in B2B sales and digital marketing. He is the founder of Wikigains and Webhostingology, a site that provides deals and coupons for software and hosting products.

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