Michael Roebuck's Blog: Yahoo! Coupon Code Feature

Last month, Yahoo! upgraded the Coupon Code ability by releasing new features that give you greater flexibility when extending coupon offers to your customers.

You are now able to:

Create single use coupon codes
Easily exclude products from offers
Sort and filter your coupon data to provide greater insight into the performance of your promotions

From the feedback I've received, I don't think many of you fully understand what these changes mean to you. In today's tough economy, people are still shopping, but now they use coupons. Report after report all state the increase in coupon usage:

According to various ComScore reports:

11/06/08: "The number of users visiting these coupon sites, with an annual salary of $100,000 or more, increased by 37 percent in the third quarter, compared with the same time last year."
1/09: "According to a January 2009 ComScore survey, over 50% of consumers are using coupons more often as a way to cut back on their shopping expenses."
2/20/09: "Searches on the term "coupon" have more than tripled, and more than half (53%) of the online population is using coupons more often."

And this is what I found in 10 minutes of searching. I barely scratched the surface of reports published.

So, What's the big deal with the new changes? Let's discuss 2 of the big changes:

1) Creating single use coupon codes. A single use coupon can only be used once. Once it has been used, it will no longer work. Single use coupon codes are great when you don't want your coupon code published on everyone's website and emailed to everyone's friends. I understand that most of your coupon codes you may want to go viral. But here are a few options you may not have thought about:

You screw up on an order and want to give the customer a large apology with an expiration date.
You work a deal with a specific supplier who will reimburse you the money given on a discount. You can email all your customers giving each one a unique coupon code for $X off there next "brand y" product. (Yes, All Web can merge coupon codes into an email)
Refer a friend and either the referrer or both receive a coupon.
Sign up for your newsletter and receive a coupon.
You can print out these coupons and include with each order as a re-order incentive.

Use your imagination! Change it around a bit. Coupons are so easy to create and use that you can test different strategies to determine what works best for you. Single use coupons can be created in blocks of up to 50,000 coupons per code series.

tip: You no longer have to begin each coupon with a letter. You can now use numbers or letters in the beginning of the coupon code!

2) Easily exclude products from offers. Remember the old way? You had to list the item codes of items valid for that code. Meaning, if you created a coupon but didn't want a few items included, you had to list every item on the site except those few that were excluded. What a pain that was! Now, you can simply add the few items not included and set the code to either "include selected items" or "exclude selected items."

Being able to exclude items should allow you to be more creative as well. Let's face it, it was a royal pain to get item codes, especially when you are dealing with options! I would try to avoid coupons at all costs because of that. Now, we can test coupons that are brand specific very easily. Also, Yahoo added a handy little chart that shows the website in outline form. I can simply select a section and all items within that section are automatically selected.

In Summary....

The coupon code feature has been improved to a much easier user interface. If you haven't used coupon codes in a while, I highly suggest you at least take a look at them again. We know that people are looking for coupons and this is one more tool you may be able to use to capture that initial or repeat order with a lower cost per acquisition than Pay Per Click or some other marketing methods.

Give me a call and we can see how coupon codes may be useful for your company!

After reading this article, be sure to read my previous initial blog post announcing and explaining some more details regarding the new Coupon Features. The article can be found here: New Coupon Code Features - 3/5/09.

Labels: coupon, features, yahoo