Discount coupons are codes through which a customer receives a price reduction, free shipping or a gift. They are used to acquire new customers, reactivate inactive ones, compensate for a problem order, and for cooperation with partners. Without limits, however, they are easily abused: codes get published on aggregator sites and are used by customers who would have bought anyway without the discount, unnecessarily reducing the margin. It is recommended to set a validity period, a minimum order value, a limit of one use per customer, the exclusion of sale items, and for partner codes, unique codes with measurement. It is worth tracking what proportion of discounted orders would have happened anyway without the discount – it is precisely this view that distinguishes an effective campaign from an across-the-board price cut.
See also: Margin and discount promotions, Incrementality, Call tracking.
