Instead of bombarding the customer with irrelevant emails, tailor your brand offers and make redemption easy, writes Olly Raeburn.
Thanks to Threshers, online couponing has had more than its fair share of the spotlight. Whether you regard its wine giveaway as a clever PR stunt or a promotion that went horribly wrong, the retailer focused attention on this marketing device.
Online couponing is fraught with difficulties. The smallest of errors can be relayed to a mass audience in the blink of an eye with no way of putting the genie back into the bottle. All the more reason, then, to plan the detail before your next campaign.
No junk mail
Inbox clutter is the email marketer's biggest bogeyman. You must begin with good, accurate data. Because email is such an immediate form of communication, deletion without opening is a likely fate, unless your brand has already entered into a dialogue with the consumer and there is existing recognition.
For this reason, third-party data rarely delivers satisfactory results. However, if you are buying data of this kind, it is vital to understand its provenance and how recipients might feel about your brand.
Get noticed
Think long and hard about your subject line. It should be nothing less than compelling, although well-known brands, or those that have an existing relationship with the consumer, are under slightly less pressure.
This is where creative copywriting really comes into its own. Many promotional buzzwords - "free" being the most obvious example - will fall foul of spam filters and should be avoided. You have got to be relevant, capture attention instantly and convince the consumer that it is worth jumping through the hoops to redeem your offer.
What's more, once your consumer gets to the body of the email, instructions must be clear, simple and engaging. You are asking consumers to do something, even if it is just printing off a voucher. You need to work hard to minimise the "too-difficult" factor that makes people drop out of an online process.
At its most basic - as in the case of Threshers - there will be no limit to the number of times a coupon can be printed off, and most brands will have insurance in place. Even here, there are simple ways to control an offer with a validity period.
Brands can, of course, revert to technologies that protect against coupon duplication, although this requires consumers to download enabling software - neither challenging nor time-consuming, but a perfect candidate for the "too-difficult" badge.
Provide value
How much value is enough to generate action? And at what point are you giving away too much and eroding brand value?
Lucozade, with its "Get your edge back" campaign, is a brilliant example. Free bottles of Lucozade Energy for 10 million consumers was a great sampling mechanic that reinforced brand awareness and drove traffic to the interactive website. Free product is always going to be a compelling offer.
Harness technology
Mobile technology shows promise. Once redeemed in store via a mobile phone, personalised offers are deleted from the system. Of course, retailers must invest in the infrastructure, and there is likely to be limited enthusiasm for such action. Smaller retailers with fewer outlets are most likely to be the pioneers in this space.
Social networking sites also represent great potential in this arena. The seeding of coupons on portals such as MySpace and Second Life may be a great way of distributing your online offering to a young, hip audience.
- Olly Raeburn is managing partner of Liquid Communications.
MY FAVOURITE CAMPAIGN: INNOCENT DRINKS
In September 2006, smoothies maker Innocent Drinks embarked on its first e-couponing campaign, via Liquid Communications and its partner Coupon Star. The intention was to reward members of "the Innocent family" for their continued loyalty to the brand.
For a brand such as Innocent, there were a number of advantages to e-couponing as a method of rewarding customers.
As always, it is important to speak to known consumers in the manner to which they have become accustomed. After all, these are the members of the Innocent family, and need to be treated nicely and spoken to in the distinctive tone and approach for which the product is famous.
Every individual who received the coupon was a recipient of the regular e-newsletter that Innocent sends out each week to subscribers. This provided a perfect fit for the e-couponing activity, allowing the brand to provide added value to loyal customers in a way that was not at all intrusive.
Creatively, all aspects of the couponing initiative followed the Innocent tone of voice, again ensuring there were no jarring inconsistencies between the brand's regular communications and this new methodology.
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