Promotional codes are a very important marketing tool for a brand since they allow to attract new users or increase the recurrence of purchase of those who are already customers through advantages or discounts.
The promotional code is closely associated with the concept of coupons, although there are some differences. In this article, we explain the characteristics of promotional codes and how you can offer them to your online community to increase sales in the short term.
What is a promotional code?
Promotional codes are codes that have a discount or benefit associated with them, such as ‘free shipping‘, ‘free sample‘, or ‘2×1‘. Your benefit is applied in the checkout process when the holder of that code presents it before making the payment.
This code can have several forms: it can be an alphanumeric string or a set formed only by letters or numbers, it can be a barcode or a QR code. The important thing is to be able to identify this code with a current advantage within the brand’s promotional actions.
In the online world, promotional codes started to be used as sales promotion in e-commerce. Many online store creation platforms, such as Magento or Woocommerce, have tools to generate promotional codes.
But apart from generating them, which can be relatively easy, the interesting thing is to find an efficient way to distribute them in the online and offline channels of the brand or company, so that the offer is known and transformed into more visits and more purchases.
For this, coupon and code apps offer a good solution, which we will show below. This is to see examples of what promotional codes look like and how they are disseminated.
As an important note, it is important to point out the difference between coupons and codes. They are often used as synonyms, especially in the marketing world.
A coupon is usually a piece of paper or a digital image that explains the benefit of the promotion. Most coupons are discount vouchers with a defined percentage or a set amount, but they describe the same promotional benefit as a code. The coupon is usually the image that shows the benefit and does not have to be nominative, nor have an associated code. Nowadays the coupon is the graphic element, whether it is an image, pdf, paper flyer, that presents the promotional benefit, and therefore, it can be accompanied by a code.
Another option is to distribute single-use codes, unique codes, to each beneficiary. In this type of action, we want to identify this person more specifically, to track their conversion: in what channel we have impacted them, what code they have obtained and when they have redeemed it.
The promotional code makes a lot of sense when the promotion we have in mind has a maximum number of beneficiaries (for example because the profit margin is quite reduced and we cannot afford a large number of discounts); also for promotions where we want to analyze how this conversion process is, or in businesses where it is important to quickly identify and redeem the promotion, therefore, we need to present the coupon with alphanumeric codes, barcodes or QRs and be able to verify them easily.
Benefits of distributing promotional codes on Facebook, Instagram, or any other online channel.
Handing out discount vouchers and other promotional coupons has its benefits, but also its risks. One of the difficulties is that if a promotion is launched without restrictions, and without segmentation, it can have a negative impact on the image of the brand and the product, and users may associate it with a lower cost.
In short, running indefinite promotions without limiting the scope can cause the brand and the product to lose value.
On the other hand, if you offer promotional codes through an app, within a campaign limited in time and target audience, it becomes an exclusive action, an advantage to take advantage of before losing it forever.
This is so because the promotional code is not given without anything in return, but the user leaves his data and proves to be interested in the product.
This allows a first filter, which is complemented by others that we can generate: the channel through which we distribute the promotion, the segment to which we spread it through advertising, the fields we ask for in the registration form, etc.
The main objectives of a promotional code distribution campaign through an app can be:
- To build customer loyalty.
- Win new customers.
- Spread the brand in new segments.
- Obtain feedback from users through a survey before obtaining the code.
- Obtain contact data of new leads to start working with them and convert them to customers.
- Analyze the most attractive promotions and the most effective channels.
Steps to organizing a coupon and promotional code campaign
The usual process for a promotional codes campaign is:
- Define the type of discount to be applied.
- Define the target of users who can benefit from this discount.
- Define the expiration date of the discount.
- Create a list of promotional codes.
- Distribute the promotional codes.
Common Case Studies
Here are the 3 most common and basic case studies of how to apply promotional codes on Facebook or other social networks:
I have a unique discount code that I want to give to my online users.
In this case, the organizer has a code, for example, the code “FB-FREE-SHIPPING“, which is applied to your online store, the user can enjoy a purchase with shipping costs included. All users who sign up for the promotion will be able to see the coupon image at the end of the registration process.
I have a unique discount code that I want to give to only 100 users.
In this case, the organizer of the promotion has a discount code that can be applied on his website as in the previous case, but the difference is that he only wants 100 users to benefit from the discount. In this case, you can create a coupon app but limit the maximum number of users and define what you want to do when the 100 discount codes have been delivered: close access to the promotion or let them register but tell them that the codes have run out. This can be useful if we want to have people in reserve, on a waiting list, or if we want to give away a second prize, for example, a raffle among all those who sign up for the promotion.
I have 100 different discount codes and I want to give them to only 100 fans.
In this case, the administrator has 100 different promotional codes. He wants to give the coupon to only 100 users. This may be the case of a business that wants to give away 100 codes for purchases and discounts for the iTunes store. In this case, iTunes works with unique promo codes per customer.
To set up a promotion of this type with Easypromos, we only need to upload the 100 codes to the coupon app prior to the start of the promotion. In this way, the codes will be distributed to each registrant. Likewise, we can also assign these 100 codes in other ways.