Coupons Should Be a Two-Way Street

In a world where standing out becomes harder and harder by the day, one strategy companies will always use is coupons. Give a consumer a way to save a little money and the chance they will come to you goes up. While instinctually you know this to be true, the fact that coupons and marketing are dear old friends is also backed by the evidence.

According to recent research, coupons make consumers: 48% more likely to buy sooner, 38% more likely to buy something more expensive, 37% more likely to buy more, and 25% more likely to buy more overall.

Still Have Doubts? Here Are a Few More Stats that Speak to the Growth of eCoupons:

• From 2014-2019 global eCoupon usage climbed from 16B to 31B
• From 2014-2019 global eCoupon users doubled from 560MM to 1.05B
• By 2024 the mobile coupon industry is predicted to grow 56.5%

There are a lot of ways to say that leveraging coupons work. Coupons are a cogent strategy that show no signs of slowing down. There is no arguing it, so why write about a topic that is accelerating so much? While coupons are an obvious strategy to gain awareness, drive consumer behavior, and create brand loyalty, when you dig a little deeper, coupons leave much to be desired.‍

The coupon central question...are you getting all you can from your coupon strategy?

You can’t talk about coupons without bringing up the downside of their usage as a sales driver. While coupons do create some type of brand loyalty, what kind of brand loyalty are you buying?

You may have a coupon strategy to drive traffic and purchases, but they are transactional outcomes. Most likely, you’re training your customers to know when and how often you will discount, so you are creating a pavlovian response that damages your brand. If consumers are trained to expect coupon savings, are they strategically loyal to your brand or merely loyal to your low prices? Of course, the way in which you have to reach your consumers is getting more difficult, so finding ways to stand out is harder. Coupons and deals are a great way to stand out in a loud crowd.

But what causes the loud crowd effect and the need to stand out?

One could argue that today’s digital world has enabled consumers to drift further away from your brand because their interaction with your company is so fragmented. You have lost the direct relationship you once controlled when TV, Print, and Radio were the only ways consumers learned about brands. In fact, consumers trust user-generated content more than brand content at this point, which brings up a new challenge.

Going forward, brands will need to have authentic content while at the same time strive to maintain control of their creative. So the question remains: Between their consumers’ trust of others' content, their infinite choices where to look, and the fact that interactions with your brand are more indirect than ever, how can you bring them closer so you get something out of this deal?‍

Coupons and UGC: A New Approach for Everyone to Win

What happens when you have a coupon strategy that works, but tends to transactionally drive sales at a lower margin with no particular gain in loyalty?

What if you have a consumer that is eager to be part of the process and stand out for letting their creative juices flow?

And finally, as a company, what if you want to create authenticity so consumers trust your brand, but want to maintain a level of control that social media gives you little control over?

How GoPro, and its Customers, Got Everything

In 2013, before our founder built EnTribe, he was hired to help GoPro create a process to gain the legal rights to the vast user generated content the product was built to create.

By creating a streamlined workflow that helped them find content, gain legal rights to it, invite creators to be a part of their ongoing process, create activations to guide their work and reward them for their usable content; GoPro ended the first year with 250,000 pieces of legally usable content.

This content was used in everything from online videos, airline seat-backs, video game consoles, and even a Superbowl ad. Because the creators were rewarded for participating with everything from recognition, coupon discounts for merchandise, to real cash for their efforts, their network of creators grew. Because GoPro had a CRM system for User Generated Content, they were able to accomplish a few things with their program.

1. They brought their creators out of the wild: Their CRM process started to cut the social media hunting out of the loop and brought their passionate followers into a system where the communication became direct.
2. They created a safe process for acquiring legal rights: By having a process they were able to ensure the content they used was cleared to use how they wanted.
3. They built a feedback loop to consistently acquire authentic content: By standing up their own creator network, GoPro now could use their process to activate and guide their network to send what was requested AND communicate how to improve their submissions. This helped them maintain control of the brand and gain the authenticity all brands now crave.
4. They drove the business through rewarding: If you are going to activate, you want to reward people for their effort. Creators that submitted content were rewarded. Their coupons drove the same sales other coupons do, but GoPro got way more out of the deal by getting authentic content from people passionate about their brand.