Do Coupons have a place in today’s Digital World?

Not only do coupons have a place in a digital world, they are steadily becoming a vital tool in helping today’s retailer drive sales and customer loyalty. When people think of coupons, they have a vision of their parents clipping coupons out of the local paper, or the person holding up the checkout line when trying to redeem their week’s worth of valuable coupons. With these images of coupons, we can understand why one might have thought coupons were going to go the way of the dinosaurs. Where do coupons fit in the digital transformation strategies for retailers? Surely there is a better solution for driving sales and customer loyalty.

In fact, the retail industry has embraced coupons as key components of a retailer’s promotion strategy. Retailers are using coupons as an effective way to award loyal customers and as a convenient mechanism for targeting offers to selected groups of customers. Coupons printed in flyers or newspapers are generally much less prevalent now, replaced by digital coupons sent via email, given as rewards for purchases, or awarded through online and mobile apps.

Targeted offers have become an extremely effective way to drive sales and increase customer loyalty. Today, retailers are implementing digital coupons that are tied to offers and then distributed to a targeted group of customers, an easy method for creating targeted relevant offers. Coupons can also be awarded based on purchase amounts, providing a simple way to award customers for loyalty.

From a consumer perspective, the key for coupon usage is relevancy and ease of use. Electronic wallets and integration of coupons with sales applications make the issuance and redemption much simpler for both the consumer and the retailer.

The challenge for retailers is they are not prepared or equipped to manage coupon offers in a digital world:

• Enforcing single use of coupons.
• Managing coupons across their different sales channels (eCcommerce, bricks and mortar, mobile, etc.)
• Difficulty handling large volumes of uniquely numbered coupons

Coupons are no longer limited as they were years ago. Coupon offers can include many different promotion types such as simple item discounts, BOGOs, bundle deals, buy more save more, transaction discounts, order discounts, tiered order discounts, discounts based on tender type, loyalty base/bonus/multiplier offers and many more.

In a digital world, retailers can create coupons in batch and extract for sending to an email service, printing service, or other external system. Retailers can easily create the descriptive information for displaying or printing a coupon offer, such as the offer description, legal text, graphical image references, format template references, and more.

The world of retail changes quickly and we all need to quickly adapt. Coupons have changed dramatically over the years, and they continue to be a key component of any successful promotion and marketing strategy. As part of their digital transformation, retailers need to ensure they have the right coupon solution to deliver on their current and future strategies.

Turns out your parents were right, it’s all about coupons, its just the clipping that has been eliminated!

Helping Retailers

The XCCommerce Promotion Solution provides full coupon control and tracking coupled with a promotion execution module that can both reward and redeem complex coupon offers. The central coupon management supports the creation, issuance and redemption of coupons. Coupons can be generic multi-use coupons or have unique ids with a set number of uses (including single use). Special capabilities also provide support for a single use generic coupon, where anyone can use the coupon but only one time each. In addition, coupons may be linked to customers and optionally restricted to use only by the linked customer.

Contact the XCCommerce team for more details on the extensive coupon and promotion functionality that is available in the Promotions Solution Suite.

This article is presented by XCCommerce’s team of retail experts. Advising global leaders in the retail industry for over 20 years,
the team at XCCommerce has developed valuable retail insights and expertise.

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