Are you couponing with purpose ?
The “to coupon or not coupon” debate is an age old one in affiliate marketing that has no universally correct answer. Coupons can be a great way to generate business with new or repeat customers and can also be a great tool to help you accomplish specific business goals. The key though is to be strategic in your implementation of coupons and coupon codes.
Before you set up a promotion, ask yourself a few questions:
- What goals am I looking to accomplish with this coupon?
- What is my targeted cost of acquiring a customer?
- Am I more concerned with improving conversion alone? Or am I more focused on achieving a specific value per sale from the promotion?
- What is my competition offering?
- What has the higher perceived value to my customer – free shipping or a percentage or flat rate off of the purchase?
- What can my margins support?
- What is the likelihood that new customers acquired will purchase from you a second time?
All of the questions above will give you some guidance as to how to structure your coupon promotion.
We’ve seen several instances where the questions above weren’t asked when coupon deals were formulated and it ended up costing the merchant in either a failed promotion or in terms of lost revenue because the offer was too generous.
Here’s an example – you want to have a quick sale to generate some extra revenue during a slow period – you have some healthy margin on your products so you decide to run a sale at 30% off or better. So you set up a coupon for a flat 30% off with no “qualifier” and when the offer goes out, you see sales increase, but the average order falls through the floor. Maybe that coupon should have been for 30% off all orders of $50 or more? Also – if your cost of shipping was effectively 15-20% of cost, maybe you could have run an offer like “Free Shipping on orders of $60 or more” and actually been a bit more profitable.
Definitely also pay attention to your net margin – especially if you are selling physical products and make sure that when you add up the affiliate commission, the network commission and the coupon that the offer still made sense from a profitability perspective. You’re in business to make money right ? The only exception to this would be if you know that you sell really effectively to existing clients and you were thinking “customer acquisition” with future sales or cross sell/upsells in mind. There are few things worse than running a promotion that you think generated dynamite results until you ran the numbers to find out that you actually lost money.
I’d also encourage you to work closely with some selected coupon affiliates to help in developing your offer. They know their audience and they know what makes them tick and can give you the benefit of the experiences they’ve had with similar offers.
Free Shipping at MakeBeer.net through 6/30
This Sunday is Father’s Day but that doesn’t mean we’re ending our free shipping promotion!
Because Dads are just so special, we’ve made our free shipping coupon last the entire month of June, so you still have two whole weeks left to drive sales with the coupon.
If you are already running one of the banners in our “Coupons and Promotions” category, you’re all set. We swap these out for you, so you can just set it and forget it.
Here are the top 10 sellers at MakeBeer.net this week!
Microbrewery Kit
Complete Wheat Beer Package
PET Caps
Complete Mexican Cerveza Package
Sanitizer
Complete Lager Package
Complete Real Ale Package
Carbonation Drops
Complete Canadian Blonde Package
Complete India Pale Ale Package
All of these products are available in our datafeed and Top Product Widget in ShareASale.
Not yet a MakeBeer.net affiliate? Join today!
Happy selling! (and brewing!)
~Karen
BowlingShirt.com Launches New Site!
BowlingShirt.com just launched a brand new website!
We’re so excited about it that we’re offering a site wide 20% coupon good on any order at BowlingShirt.com using the code “NEWSITE20″ through the end of May. (Banners for this new promo are available in SAS.)
We’ve also got a brand new datafeed with nearly DOUBLE the number of products (1867!) that were previously listed. All our products are much easier to find, our site search is vastly improved and we’ll be adding even more items soon…all this means that conversions are increasing and so are your sales, so be sure to get your links up!
Check it out and let us know what you think!
Not a BowlingShirt.com affiliate yet? Join today! Earn 10% Sales Commission with a 60 day cookie!
Happy Selling!
~Karen
Father’s Day Free Shipping at MakeBeer.net
Father’s Day is just a month away and it’s an awesome sales opportunity for MakeBeer.net affiliates!
Father’s Day is our second busiest holiday behind Christmas and we’d love to see you cash in. To help out, we’re offering Free Shipping on all orders of $99 or more to encourage sales of the Complete Microbrew Kit – our most popular gift item for Father’s Day.
If you are already running one of the banners from the “Coupons and Promotions” category, you’re all set as we always rotate those banners to feature our newest promotions. If you’re not yet running one of the promo banners, just log into ShareASale for an assortment of sizes.
We’re excited to see you do well over the next month, so if you need anything to help you promote this offer, please ask.
Here are the top 10 sellers at MakeBeer.net this week!
Complete Wheat Beer Package
Microbrewery Kit
PET Caps
Sanitizer
Complete Mexican Cerveza Package
Complete Real Ale Package
Carbonation Drops
Complete India Pale Ale Package
Complete Canadian Blonde Package
Complete Lager Package
All of these products are available in our datafeed and Top Product Widget in ShareASale.
Not yet a MakeBeer.net affiliate? Join today!
Happy selling! (and brewing!)
~Karen
New MakeBeer.net Coupon and Top Sellers 4/14
It’s spring and it’s time to start brewing those summer beers. Through April 30th, MakeBeer.net is featuring a collection of lighter, more refreshing styles in the Spring Fling sale. The sale is good on the following complete beer kits: Pilsener, European Lager, Wheat Beer, Canadian Blonde, Draught, Mexican Cerveza, and Lager.
You can find creatives for this new sale in ShareASale:
Save 15% on on “Spring Fling” Complete Beer Kits at MakeBeer.net through 4/30/2010 with coupon code “SPRING”
View the Landing Page
Here are the top 10 sellers at MakeBeer.net this week!
Microbrewery Kit
Carbonation Drops
Complete India Pale Ale Package
Complete Mexican Cerveza Package
Complete Pilsener Package
Complete English Bitter Package
Complete Wheat Beer Package
Complete Dark Ale Package
Light Dry Malt – 500gm
Dextrose
All of these products are available in our datafeed and Top Product Widget in ShareASale.
Not yet a MakeBeer.net affiliate? Join today!
Happy selling! (and brewing!)
~Karen
