To drive ROI and retention properly, you need to master customer rewards. Vouchers, coupons, or discounts are essential to marketing, and your success often depends on how well you employ them. Learn the best practices with CareCloud and transform your brand into an unstoppable customer magnet.

WINNING OVER CUSTOMERS, ONE VOUCHER AT A TIME

People love to be rewarded. Age-old incentives like coupons and vouchers are the easiest, most elegant way to motivate customers toward your business. They reliably boost sales, increase ROI, and cement your customers’ loyalty. According to Statista, over 90% of online shoppers search for a coupon or discount before making a purchase: the urge to make a smart purchase is as strong as ever.

Vouchers can spice up almost every step of the customer journey. They can be distributed with breakneck speed and personalized to each customer. The days of sending coupons by post to a mailbox to unsuspecting customers are over. Let’s take voucher strategies to a higher level.

1. LEAD MAGNETS 

This is one of the most basic strategies for beginning e-shops and a solid springboard for more exciting stuff. Vouchers can be a great help when collecting valuable customer data or gaining leads. Add pop-up messages that activate on your website whenever a potential buyer spends time browsing it. In order to get at least an email address, you need to give something back. A 10% discount or free shipping on the first buy should do the trick. 

2. TIME-LIMITED EXCLUSIVES

Nothing creates a sense of urgency more than time-limited offers. When creating rewards as part of automation workflows, always set the appropriate expiration date to give the customer enough time to act but also make them feel tension. FOMO (fear of missing out) is a powerful motivator, so tap into it once in a while.

CareCloud’s reward designer allows you to set a custom time-limited reward that triggers automatically upon assigning it. Moreover, you can set simple automation that alerts customers when a reward is about to expire. 

3. DON’T OVERDO IT

Again, vouchers serve to motivate purchases, but they should also hold a value of their own. If you hand out vouchers like they’re candy, they will soon start to lose that value, and your brand will look, well, cheap. 

Rather than settling for a 5% off every Tuesday, try offering higher and more unique rewards. True, you risk a surge of one-time buyers, and maybe a lower campaign yield, but those customers that stay hooked will remain so. Don’t lose the bigger picture – retention is the way forward.

Alternatively, mix up your rewards. Offer 8% off on one product type the first week, then 15% off a specific brand product the second week, and on the third one, send out a  25% off the combination of two specific products. Be imaginative.

4. SEGMENT YOUR AUDIENCE

This one is a treat. You can easily personalize reward distribution according to customer segments. CareCloud’s extensive capabilities let you take every piece of customer data into account: purchase history, e-shop activity, cart contents, and even their demographics. To warm up cold customers or secure soon-to-be loyal customers, use RFM segmentation. The days of blanket voucher bombardments are over!

In CareCloud, you can develop simple automation that sends out incentives on customers’ first purchases to reel them in. In retail, you can segment your audiences by age and send out different product line discounts that cater to each section. If you have a customer who often buys Nike T-shirts, they will surely appreciate an exclusive 10% discount on the said product rather than on Salomon shoes. To each their own.

5. AUTOMATE THROUGH EVERY CHANNEL

While email is still the go-to channel, vouchers can be sent by SMS or various apps like WhatsApp, Viber, or PassMachine. You can even send a voucher straight to Apple Wallet or Google Pay. But while you can reach your customers anywhere, the workforce required to manage the distribution will go through the roof. Or will it? Let automation take care of that.

By setting up several workflows (and utilizing the aforementioned segmentation), you can automatically react to customers’ activity, whether a purchase or a bad review. You can satisfy restless customers, reward newcomers, or automatically escalate communication via multiple messages.

6. SET UP A LOYALTY PROGRAM

Vouchers are ambassadors of loyalty programs and have been since their infancy. Whether it’s a tiered program, paid subscription, or simple points scheme, be sure to reward the loyalty of your customers regularly. The birthday voucher is just a start. With customer data collected throughout your customers’ journeys, you can easily pinpoint their favorite products and cater to their interests. If a customer likes crime novels, be sure to send them a lucrative 20% discount on their favorite genre once they reach a yearly milestone. You get the gist.

7. WHO NEEDS PDF VOUCHERS ANYMORE?

The days of paper vouchers or printed coupons are coming to an end. People seldom care about whether a voucher is physical or not: it is the sweet deal that matters! CareCloud took this to heart and allows you to assign rewards to particular purchases automatically when the prerequisites are met; alternatively, you can send QR codes or discounts through email, SMS, push notifications, Wallet, Google Pay, or PassMachine. 

Distribute rewards for newsletter subscriptions, large purchases, a combination of products, etc. The reward types range from X% off discounts, loyalty points, vouchers, loyalty cards, free shipping, or early access to exclusive product lines. CareCloud knows how to do rewards.

REWARDS ARE OUR SPECIALITY

Having automation, campaign designer, and rewards creator all in one package sounds fun, right? Two decades of loyalty programs and digital marketing experience come in handy, and this is exactly what backs up our platform. With CareCloud, you will become the undisputed Coupon Master. Join us and watch your sales and retention skyrocket!