For many companies, giving out coupons is low on the list of favorite marketing activities. Between the decreased margins, production costs, and the management headaches around logistics, compliance, and redemptions, the potential return just doesn’t seem worth the effort.
However, writing off coupons altogether is a short-sighted move for most brands. For one, customers love them, as research shows:
- Consumers who use coupons spend 37 percent more than those who don’t.
- After receiving a discount offer, 67 percent of customers have made a spontaneous purchase.
- 75 percent use coupons to determine what goes on their grocery list.
- 64 percent of consumers say discounts speed their decision to purchase.
Additionally, many retailers all but require the brands they sell in store to provide coupons alongside prominent displays. In short, if you’re looking to get your products into customers’ shopping carts, whether by appealing to them directly or through top retailers, a coupon is a powerful tool for the marketing toolbelt.
Fortunately, coupon management doesn’t have to be complicated. A few key tools and adjustments can make coupon marketing easy and…dare we say it? Fun. Here are three questions companies should consider to improve their coupon marketing strategy — and how OneTouchPoint’s alcohol and beverage industry experts and end-to-end marketing management platform can help.
How can we streamline our coupon marketing logistics?
Let’s start with the biggest obstacle: the logistics, including everything from the expense of production to the headaches of managing distribution and tracking redemption. Not to mention that, for some heavily regulated industries like alcohol & beverage, the pressure of staying compliant with state-by-state laws is critical. It’s a lot for already-overburdened marketers to manage, but OneTouchPoint is ready to help. With decades of experience managing coupon programs—and all the messiness that comes with them—we’re ready to take on all the legwork so your team can focus on the big picture.
Here are a few ways we streamline coupon management for clients:
1. Logistics
Our platform makes the myriad logistics of coupon management a breeze—starting with providing a single source from which to manage all of your coupon orders, regardless of offer or geography. What’s more, our platform has integrations with on-demand, just-in-time printing, and aggregated coupon buy capabilities that reduce waste and boost sustainability by buying only what you need at any given time. And finally, our platform is fully integrated with our nationwide production and distribution centers, meaning we can help you control costs by producing and distributing from the closest facilities to your coupons’ destinations.
2. Compliance
For highly regulated industries like adult beverage, the next challenge is ensuring coupons meet regulations for every state (and don’t get sent to states that prohibit certain coupons altogether). We ensure compliance by managing the creation of barcodes and state polling, and by working directly with legal, compliance, finance teams, and even state authorities to secure approval. As an additional backstop, our platform ensures coupons can only be ordered and distributed in states where they’re legally allowed to be circulated.
3. Budget Management & Fraud Protection
The dips into profits—and the risk of even more margin loss through counterfeit, reuse, etc.—are often enough to turn businesses off of coupons altogether. But OneTouchPoint has controls to help ensure your coupons aren’t abused and don’t cut any further into profits than absolutely necessary.
Our built-in estimated redemption calculator allows users to see the total cost of coupon orders, which does two things: it allows businesses to contain costs, and it highlights any fraud potential (for example, a 20 percent redemption rate in a region that generally sees about 5 percent) in time to nip it in the bud. Even better, our full rights management capabilities ensure users only see what they have access to, and our budget controls and tracking functionality empower you to keep track of spend, circulation, and more.
Can we tailor coupons to local & regional markets?
Absolutely! Today’s customers are looking for personalized communications from the brands they support, and coupons are no exception! McKinsey has found that personalization can reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as half, lift revenues by up to 15 percent and increase marketing spend efficiency by up to 30 percent.
Why not take advantage of those capabilities that enable customization based on local opportunities and create coupons that are more personal? You can customize coupons based on locations, with team colors, local lingo, etc. And here again, our platform can help. Using our modular content capabilities, global and regional marketing teams can quickly put together personalized coupons using blocks of pre-vetted and pre-approved imagery and contents that meet brand guidelines and quality standards. Now every marketer has the capability to create tailored coupons to entice their unique audiences — without overburdening corporate or jeopardizing brand integrity. And again, OneTouchPoint’s team will work directly with the redemption house to manage legal and regulatory compliance.
Can we use coupons to show off our branding?
Once you button up the logistical details, have some fun making your company’s coupons attractive and exciting to customers. This will drive up ROI enough to more than make up for diminished margins. After all, coupons don’t exist in a vacuum—rather, they’re an integrated piece of your business’s multichannel marketing strategy.
Whether you’re using them as digital lead magnets to grow your customer base, including them with in-store displays, coupons have the potential to be powerful extensions of your brand, so use them as opportunities to leverage those carefully designed visuals and that meticulously crafted brand language. By treating coupons as extensions of your brand, you can give customers something that is not only useful but engaging and delightful, whether they’re finding it on their phones or in a store.
OneTouchPoint: Your Partner in Coupon Marketing & More
While coupons may have a bad rap among marketers, the reality is that they’re a critical piece of an effective omnichannel marketing strategy. And the good news is, they don’t have to be the headache many companies perceive them to be. At OneTouchPoint, we’re proud to help our clients integrate coupon strategies into every marketing campaign, from creative design to barcode management, approvals, and regulatory compliance, our team understands the ins and outs of coupon promotion, and we are ready to help you catch eyes and capture revenue—online and off.
To learn more about how OneTouchPoint makes coupon marketing a breeze (not to mention all the other ways we power brand engagement) for our clients, we invite you to request a live demo. Our experts will be happy to walk you through our platform and discuss strategy.