How to Offer Discounts and Coupons While Profiting

One of the best ways to drive sales and satisfy customers is to offer periodic coupons and discounts. At the same time, you don’t want to sacrifice profits. So, how can you balance the benefits of offering customers the chance to save while maintaining profitability?

Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to appeal to customers with discounts and coupons without hurting your bottom line. We’ll explore some of these strategies here to give you some ideas.

Offer Exclusive Rewards to New Customers

To connect with new customers and get them to spend more on their initial purchases, consider offering rewards that are unique to them.

For instance, you can offer a certain percent or dollar amount off of the first month or more of a subscription, or you can offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount of money.

These types of discounts won’t likely hurt your ability to profit while effectively bringing more people to their first purchase.

Encourage Customers to Make a Second Purchase

Once customers make a purchase, you can also drive future purchases by offering coupons on subsequent orders. Ideally, these coupons would be for a lower amount on larger orders and have an expiration date that generates a fear of missing out.

You could also encourage people to subscribe to newsletters or sign up for accounts on your website. You can then make relevant product recommendations based on these customers’ order histories and interests. You can also notify them of future sales and discounts. Simply keeping people aware of you in this way could further drive sales.

Targeted Coupons

Don’t just offer coupons to any of your customers when the time seems right. Look into individual users’ data and buyer behaviors to find customers who are less likely to buy from you without a discount or coupon.

You can then gear your offers to these customers who are more inclined to make a purchase if they can expect to save some money. Doing so will drive sales while ensuring you aren’t so frequently offering discounts to customers who don’t seek them out as often.

Develop a Loyalty Program

If your business model allows for it, consider putting together a loyalty program that rewards your most loyal customers.

Many people enjoy rewards programs that make every purchase worthwhile. You might offer the occasional freebie after customers obtain a number of points after several orders, or points could simply go toward discounts.

A good rewards program will keep customers coming back to you more regularly to do business, keeping the revenue coming in exchange for certain benefits.

Offer Pre-Order Discounts for New Products

Ahead of new product launches, you can generate some buzz and encourage early sales with pre-order discounts. This is a great way to boost sales for new products early on while helping customers save.

However, you should make sure your discount is reasonable and not too high. Not only can having a high discount on a new product reduce profitability, but it can also devalue the product in consumers’ minds. Generally, try to stay within a 20% discount on new products with pre-sale orders.

Of course, you can also encourage people to buy a new product by using scarcity as a marketing tactic. For example, you might only have 200 of an item in stock, which you could mention when promoting your product. This further generates FOMO while bypassing the need for a discount on early orders.

Enable Customers to Save on Product Bundles

You can also keep your business profitable while reducing costs for customers with discounted product bundles.

Consumers often enjoy product bundles because of the convenience they offer. By grouping certain similar or complementary products together, you’ll encourage more people to maximize their average cart value (ACV) while giving them the chance to save a little on that larger order.

Also, keep in mind that you’ll increase profitability in a couple of other ways with product bundles. Specifically, you’ll be able to save on packaging and shipping.

Upsell, Upsell, Upsell

You don’t want to overwhelm your customers with upsells, but they can be very effective when used the right way.

For instance, you might offer customers a chance to save when they buy two of the same product or even more with a multiplier and corresponding discounts for each amount.

You may also offer discounts on the addition of a smaller complementary product to an order, creating a bundle in the process.

Be Smart About Your Offers to Combine Appeal and Profitability

The fact is that people enjoy discounts and coupons, and they offer numerous benefits for the businesses that offer them. The right strategy will help you satisfy your customers, but it will also help maintain or even increase profitability.

Want to find out more about how you can succeed with your online business? Turn to the professionals at Gray Growth Consulting and learn the keys to long-term growth.