Like a love letter sent to a special someone, you really want your subscribers to open your email. If it gets trashed or just floats to the bottom of their inbox, you haven’t reached them with your message and the value of your brand fades. An increasingly popular way to drive engagement with your email marketing is to include a coupon or discount.
Consider the following two headlines:
- “It’s Springtime, so order our services and enjoy this great weather in style.”
- “This Spring, take advantage of our 25% off deal and be prepared for Summer.”
The second one has more appeal doesn’t it? The first one is telling your customer what to do and asking for a sale. The second option is more suggestive and demonstrates a willingness on the part of your brand to offer value.
If you can put yourself in your customer’s shoes, you have to admit that you’re far more likely to open an email that is offering you something for nothing, rather than one that is asking you for something. If you’re ready to try coupons as part of your email marketing, get creative on different ways to incorporate the offer.
Clever ways to use coupons as part of your regular email marketing
- Take advantage of seasons and holidays. Add seasonally relevant coupons to your regular email marketing schedule. Think of how your customers can use your services in the context of Springtime, Valentine’s Day and other relevant cultural events.
- Get repeat business. Once you’ve sold a customer, offer a special “thank you” coupon 30, 60 or 90 days after the conclusion of their first purchase encouraging them to return by sweetening the pot with a special discount.
- Tie-in coupons with social media. You can offer a progressive discount for using a coupon while also taking some action regarding your brand’s social media platforms. For example, 10% off for simply using the coupon alone but 15% off if the customer is a Facebook fan and 20% off if they are a fan and share one or more of your Facebook posts in the week prior to redeeming the coupon.
Email marketing has a long-standing track record of driving value for brands by creating a captured audience of individuals who have expressed loyalty or affiliation with your brand. If you fail to deliver value to your list, you’ll see a decline in subscribers. You want to make sure that your subscribers stick around, and you attract more subscribers.
You can use coupons or email list exclusive discounts as a means of driving signups.
In the call-to-action on your site or social channels, encourage your audience to sign-up for your list in exchange for an immediate discount. Make sure to continuously seed your list with new coupons and discounts, so they don’t lose track of the value in their original choice to sign up.
Coupons are an excellent way to provide value to email subscribers, but they shouldn’t be the only method you employ. Ultimately, selling is about conveying value, not discounting price. While everyone loves to save a buck, you should also always be looking for new and creative ways to provide value to your audience by the way of engaging and informative content creation relevant to your brand’s value proposition.
It’s easy to offer coupons with Waftio!
Simply create a simple form web visitors must complete to get the discount and be added to your list, and then either offer the coupon as a discount code or link to a printable coupon. Integrate your Waftio form with Mailchimp, Aweber, and more to have them added to your lists automatically!
Are you using coupons in your email marketing?
Author: Mike Gingerich, President of web firm Digital Hill, Co-Founder of TabSite .
Digital and Social Media Marketer, Speaker, and Business Consultant. Part geek, part marketer, total digital junkie! Seeking to add value, make the complex simple, and leave a positive impact.
Follow me on twitter: @mike_gingerich.
