The Coupons Business Discussion Thread

Andy

This is the place for pros to discuss the business side of our coupons feature.

Want to chat about promotions? Strategy? Marketing? Post away right here!

For help or problems with coupons, we have a separate thread here, or you can email our Support Heroes directly.

UWsmugger

Thank you!

Andy wrote:

This is the place for pros to discuss the business side of our coupons feature.

Want to chat about promotions? Strategy? Marketing? Post away right here!

For help or problems with coupons, we have a separate thread here, or you can email our Support Heroes directly.

I just want to say "Thank you!" for all of yours and team SmugMug's hard work in getting coupons off the ground and having the patience to do it right. This could not have been easy, but I am excited to get going and start using them.


Blessings,

Tom

leightonoc

Putting Coupons To The Test...
Nice to see the coupons module live on the site. I'll be marketing with them hard today on Facebook, Twitter and an e-mail blast. I'll keep you posted on how they work.

Thanks,
Leighton

lukaitis photo

Thank You
This will really help with my sales next racing season.

ckysports

Coupon emails
Is there any way to email the coupons to our customers? For example I want to send out an email to people that have already bought our photos and allow them to take 20% off reprints.

drmoon

At Cost Coupons
Can you explain more on the At Cost coupon?

How does it work on Downloads with no cost and no shipping?

It appears to be dangerous as it has no value limit. I would like to use it give a person perhaps X dollars of purchase at cost just to give some limit on it.

Perhaps that can be in a future update. I am sure you will getting a lot more request for improvements.

Will we see the order that is used on the coupon? We normally do not see orders unless the items are above cost.

DM

mbellot

Andy, BWG and anyone else...

Thanks so much for this long awaited feature.

The best (and most unbelievable) part is that it happened just in time for a holiday dance recital I'll be shooting. The program goes to print next Monday, so I still have time to add in a coupon code.

I'll be checking this thread regularly for new ideas.

SamirD

:ivar

So what's your Christmas strategy? I was thinking of a percentage off coupon on a order above a certain dollar level with the coupon expiring the last day that they could order something in time for Christmas.

I was also thinking of using the dollar off coupons like gift cards, but I'm not sure how to implement that.

cosgravestudios

Emailing coupons

Andy wrote:

This is the place for pros to discuss the business side of our coupons feature.

Want to chat about promotions? Strategy? Marketing? Post away right here!

For help or problems with coupons, we have a separate thread here, or you can email our Support Heroes directly.

I love the new coupon feature! Next up, package pricing...?
I'd like to show off my specials, and I see that the coupon manager creates those great looking coupons, however, if they are only for my benefit i dont see much point. I've been taking steps to use the pretty graphic, however it's time consuming. I create the coupon, use grab it to copy the image, convert the image to jpg, upload it to a protected gallery, and then embed it in my promo email. Lots of work, is there an easier way Andy?
THANKS!!
Heather

Mox

I posted a 15% coupon to facebook about an hour ago, and have already had an order! clap Thank you SmugMug!

drmoon

cosgravestudios wrote:

I love the new coupon feature! Next up, package pricing...?
I'd like to show off my specials, and I see that the coupon manager creates those great looking coupons, however, if they are only for my benefit i dont see much point. I've been taking steps to use the pretty graphic, however it's time consuming. I create the coupon, use grab it to copy the image, convert the image to jpg, upload it to a protected gallery, and then embed it in my promo email. Lots of work, is there an easier way Andy?
THANKS!!
Heather

Heather,

You are right, it would be nice to show the graphic image smugmug is creating. If smugmug has no other solution, it might be easier for you to create a coupon template image of you own (photoshop or other program), save it and upload it to your gallery. That may be easier than trying to rip the one from the screen.

Just a thought.

DM

SmugShooter

Andy wrote:

This is the place for pros to discuss the business side of our coupons feature.

Want to chat about promotions? Strategy? Marketing? Post away right here!

For help or problems with coupons, we have a separate thread here, or you can email our Support Heroes directly.

Great start on coupons; however, to hit a home run you need to implement the gallery and product restrictions/bindings. What you have now is virtually identical to one of your main competitors, a service I used to use at one time. What I & many others found is that global coupons are both (a) not very useful and (b) are very dangerous. For example, I create a coupon for 15% off intending for it to be used for prints where I have sufficient margin to cover the discount but then someone uses the coupon to buy a high priced gift item where I don't have a 15% margin -- all of a sudden I'm in the hole. To be really really useful coupons need to be more targetted so that we can do things like:

-- offer an incentive so that people can get a discount on a specific gallery or set of galleries without allowing them to use the discount on all galleries (such as the first week of a new gallery to drive sales or for an old gallery to bring in the stragglers before deleting it).

-- offer incentives for specific products, to get customers to give more consideration to gifts and other products besides orindary prints.

-- to let a specific organization or group get discounts on just their images, without fear of the coupon code leaking out and being used for unintended purchases.

-- etc. etc.

dwterry

I agree. Coupons definitely need the ability to be tied to a specific album or sharegroup or set of albums or category.

A site-wide 20% off coupon is one thing. But a full print credit (intended to let a customer pick up prints from their purchased "package") doesn't work if the print credit can be applied anywhere on the site.

It's a must have.

On the other hand, a big THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for getting us this far! Outstanding!

dwterry

Next up: Quantity discounts.

- Discounts if total package purchase exceeds some dollar amount
- Discounts if more than one copy of a specific print is purchased
- Discounts if a subsequent print of the same image (same size or smaller) is purchased

Perhaps a little complicated. But it would help me sell to families where often one large print is purchased for the head of the family and many smaller prints are purchased for the children or siblings.

dwterry

And, for what it's worth, up until now ... any time a discount (quantity or otherwise) was needed, I was forced to have to do order fulfillment myself, thus taking smugmug completely out of the loop.

Making discounts available means that smugmug finally gets a share in the profits. And I don't mind. It means less work for me and I'm okay with sharing!

sirensofsong

I'd like to say thanks too! I was hoping coupons would be live by the holidays and you guys came through!

echmrr

dwterry wrote:

Next up: Quantity discounts.

- Discounts if total package purchase exceeds some dollar amount
quote]

Both the "Amount Off" and "Percent Off" coupons can be set up with a minimum purchase amount.

AnneMcBean

dwterry wrote:

- Discounts if total package purchase exceeds some dollar amount

Using the word "package" throws me a bit, but with the current feature you can set an order minimum to apply the coupon. For example, $20 off an order $100 or more. Or 10% off orders over $20.

ckysports wrote:

Is there any way to email the coupons to our customers? For example I want to send out an email to people that have already bought our photos and allow them to take 20% off reprints.

Not yet, other than just a regular share email that includes the coupon code in your message. Thanks for the request!

drmoon wrote:

Can you explain more on the At Cost coupon?

How does it work on Downloads with no cost and no shipping?

It appears to be dangerous as it has no value limit. I would like to use it give a person perhaps X dollars of purchase at cost just to give some limit on it.

Perhaps that can be in a future update. I am sure you will getting a lot more request for improvements.

Will we see the order that is used on the coupon? We normally do not see orders unless the items are above cost.

DM

Currently the at-cost coupon gets you free purchase of digital downloads. We could maybe change that if there was a good case to do so...

I'm not sure how you'd put a limit on it, because it would be hard to draw a line in the sand and decide which products would keep their pro pricing in effect if more products were ordered than were covered by the coupon.

You do see orders placed with at-cost coupons show up in your sales history. An order with a coupon will show up, regardless of whether the prints were marked up.

SamirD wrote:

I was also thinking of using the dollar off coupons like gift cards, but I'm not sure how to implement that.

Use a print credit! That's what we designed them for.

-Anne
SmugMug Support Hero

ckysports

Coupons
I would suggest to make the feature where we can email to our current customers for re-print coupons. Please include a "SELECT ALL" button on the email list. It is too much work to select them each at a time. I love the coupons though and appreciate your teams hard work ethic.

Next lets get package pricing!

AnneMcBean

cosgravestudios wrote:

I'd like to show off my specials, and I see that the coupon manager creates those great looking coupons, however, if they are only for my benefit i dont see much point.

Yep, we need to help you guys distribute coupons for sure. Thanks for the feedback!

And thanks, too, for those weighing in on gallery and product specific coupons. There's also a great help and feedback thread here: http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=152123 .

-Anne
SmugMug Support Hero

takeflightphoto

questions
Can a single coupon code be given to multiple customers for a limited time sale on all items on a site?

In other words, "Until December 31, get 10% off your purchase, not including shipping."

One coupon code generated that can be used any number of times by any number of customers? It just shuts off on Dec. 31.

Also, is the shopping cart set up to take more than one coupon, and stack them? In other words, if I give the 10% coupon out, could a wedding client use a separate 10% coupon to get a 20% discount?

Thanks.

jon

ColoradoSkier

takeflightphoto wrote:

Can a single coupon code be given to multiple customers for a limited time sale on all items on a site?

In other words, "Until December 31, get 10% off your purchase, not including shipping."

One coupon code generated that can be used any number of times by any number of customers? It just shuts off on Dec. 31.

Yes. You can also limit how many times it is used if you want to.

AnneMcBean

takeflightphoto wrote:

Also, is the shopping cart set up to take more than one coupon, and stack them? In other words, if I give the 10% coupon out, could a wedding client use a separate 10% coupon to get a 20% discount?

One coupon per pro per order. So, a customer cannot use a percent off and a print credit on your prints, for example. (At this point.)

-Anne
SmugMug Support Hero

sheriffvedder@mac.com

multiple uses by the same person?
I'm just wondering if there is any way to limit a coupon to 1 use per orderER? As in I give the same code to a lot of people (like printed on business cards), but limit it so "Sally" can't make 5 minimum orders, entering the code every time, therefore getting the discount 5 times?

jbakerphoto

Idea:
It would be nice to assign a coupon code to a certain gallery rather then have it valid for all your pictures.

ColoradoSkier

sheriffvedder@mac.com wrote:

I'm just wondering if there is any way to limit a coupon to 1 use per orderER? As in I give the same code to a lot of people (like printed on business cards), but limit it so "Sally" can't make 5 minimum orders, entering the code every time, therefore getting the discount 5 times?

How is that different than placing one large order and getting the same discount?

drmoon

SmugShooter wrote:

What I & many others found is that global coupons are both (a) not very useful and (b) are very dangerous. For example, I create a coupon for 15% off intending for it to be used for prints where I have sufficient margin to cover the discount but then someone uses the coupon to buy a high priced gift item where I don't have a 15% margin -- all of a sudden I'm in the hole.

I agree with you on all the other things you said including the problem mentioned above. But I thought I would share what I did for now to help avoid this.

I created a coupon with a higher discount intended to be used on the small print items with higher margins (ie a 4x6 print that is marked to $5). Then limit the total amount this coupon can discount to $4.00. So basically, I have a 20% discount up to a $20.00 purchase. In the Up to $, make sure you put in $4.00 and not $20.00. Otherwise, you are giving the user a 20% discount up to a $100.00 purchase.

I then created another coupon for higher priced items that have lower margins with a lower discount.

Not a perfect solution, but it may do the trick.

DM

sirensofsong

I'm loving the coupons and plan to get them up and running this weekend. I plan on using two coupons this holiday season - one for past customers and one for the general public. I plan on emailing an image of the coupons to past customers, but I'm still trying to figure out the best way to inform the casual visitor.

My first thought is to have an image of the coupon on my homepage, either in the About Me section or as the splash image of my homepage slideshow. Problem with that is a lot of my visitors find my site through google and never hit the homepage. Does anyone have any ideas on how to place an image or text of the coupon on every page other than creating a new banner?

Thanks!

----I just decided to add some text under the banner which links to the coupon...

drmoon

dwterry wrote:

- Discounts if total package purchase exceeds some dollar amount

Not sure if this is what you need or if anyone commented.

In the coupon manage, set the minimum purchase $. Look in the lower right.

DM

sheriffvedder@mac.com

ColoradoSkier wrote:

How is that different than placing one large order and getting the same discount?

If the discount is a percentage off, then there is no difference... but if the code is for a dollar amount, then it could be a huge diff... Say $10 off an order of $100 or more, if they do one big order say $500, after discount it's $490, but if it allows them to do it multiple times, 5 orders of $100, the final is $450... That's a substantial diff, and only gets larger if the $ discount is higher... In my case, I sometimes like to give a "New Customer" one time discount of $50 off of their first order of $100 or more, which is potentially a loss as is, but if they order $500, minus the $50, Leaves the order at $450, which is acceptable for a first order... but if they were to do it for 5 $100 orders the total would only be $250, making for slim pickins around here...

Now this isn't a deal breaker, one way or another, because I could always make one-time-only codes if needed, but it would be nice to be able to print an amount of business cards to hand out at events (Bridal fairs, Senior Showcases, etc)...

beetle8

Baldy wrote:

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=4 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=alt2 style="BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset; BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset; BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset">Originally Posted by beetle8
My guess is when we wake up Friday, 12-4-09

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Interesting guess.

Do I get a prize?<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->