How to get smart with Coupons — An overview of Smart Coupons for WooCommerce
Tags: Plugins For Wordpress, Ecommerce, Woocommerce, Woocommerce Plugins, Coupon

How to get smart with Coupons — An overview of Smart Coupons for WooCommerce WebToffee Dec 2, 2020·9 min read

It’s everywhere. And honestly, it’s a bit too much. Yet, coupons could really ramp up your sales figures or the number of happy customers (or both) if you apply the right coupon strategy.

Already plagued by reduced order totals and customers waiting for coupons to be released to buy even a pencil, it’s time you get smart with using coupons on your WooCommerce store.

Let me introduce you to one of our plugins that could greatly abate your coupon worries and get that all-important ROI to shoot up.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Just like any other useful plugin that lets you test it out first, Smart Coupons for WooCommerce has a free and premium plugin version. Much of your needs will be met by the free version though. And even those features are quite extensive than the standard WooCommerce settings.

Once you get the hang of things, you’ll realize the infinite possibilities to scale up your business with coupons. The premium version of Smart Coupons is built exactly for that.

Smart Coupons by WebToffee

Merely giving away coupons and discounts won’t cut it anymore. Customers can easily see what your competitors are doing and easily choose the lowest-priced item.

It takes proper planning and execution to ensure each coupon given out brings in traffic to your WooCommerce store. Here’s where coupon strategies and customizing coupons for specific needs come in to picture.

Smart Coupons for WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that allows you to create all kinds of coupons and fully customize them to your liking. Right from its purpose and appearance and all the way to the shipping method to which a coupon is applied, the plugin grants you complete control over how coupons are presented to your customers.

How do coupons help your store?

Before I bore you with the features that a free plugin has, let’s see how well you could use coupons for your marketing efforts and see if Smart Coupons for WooCommerce could in any way help you with that.

No matter how well you build products, your efforts will fall short of reaching appreciative customers if you don’t promote your products well.

Photo by Kate Trysh on Unsplash

Flyers, mails, and loudspeakers have long been used to get the word out to people. Although the mediums changed, you can still see ads on every web page you visit, a plethora of emails waiting for you to get opened, and even Youtube videos have promotions in between now.

The market is ready to see some sensible choices from your business. You could either join the crowd and their cacophony or choose customized plans that you know your customers would love to see on your website.

Here’s where managing your coupons become a valid idea to pursue. While thinking of providing coupons to customers, there can be two branches of thought that could cloud your decisions.

First, you might be counting through all the different coupons and discount offers that could bring in new customers. Next, there is an obvious sacrifice of order value whenever you give out a coupon.

It’s important to reach a balance between order value and coupon value so that in the end, you add more customers and revenue without much loss to your profits.

Why do you need a plugin for coupons anyway?

WooCommerce allows you to create coupons in minutes. And yes, it’s pretty simple to set up on your store too. But it’s always worth trading mediocre settings with more functions if it assures a greater ROI, don’t you think?

WooCommerce coupons allow you some of the basic features you need to start giving coupons to your initial buyers. Before we see the clear advantages of a specialized plugin for the job, let’s see what a standard WooCommerce account offers you in store coupons.

What WooCommerce really offers in terms of coupons

In your Standard WooCommerce store, you get three options to tinker with— general coupon data, usage restriction, and usage limit of coupons — apart from generating coupon codes for your coupons.

In your general coupon data setting, you can select the type of coupon that would best suit your sales — percentage discount, fixed cart discount, or fixed product discounts. Here’s also where you add coupon amounts and expiry dates for coupons.

Placing some restrictions for coupons is also really important to ensure no one rigs the system for free shopping. Under usage restriction, you can decide the lowest and the highest subtotal in your cart for which you can allow coupons.

Here’s where you decide the number of times a coupon could be used, add conditions where sale items are excluded from coupons, and so on. You can even decide to restrict coupons unless a particular product is added to the cart.

Finally, all your coupons can be released based on the usage limit per coupon or user. By default, these values are set to infinite, but here’s where you can create a limited number of coupons to build up anticipation for sales.

By limiting the usage limit per coupon, your coupon offer ends the moment all the allowed number of coupons are applied by customers. On the other hand, limiting the usage limit per customer allows you to give all your customers a chance at using the coupon. Both are great ways really.

And there it is. These are the options you get by default on your standard WooCommerce store. Now let’s see what a plugin can do to electrify the coupon experience for your customers.

Why you actually need Smart Coupons

It’s always a hassle to get on your dashboard and add coupons just before every deal. WooCommerce lacks simple options like scheduling coupons which are super helpful while planning your coupon strategy.

Smart Coupons For WooCommerce

Here are some of the reasons why you need the free plugin of Smart Coupons for WooCommerceenabled on your store:

Schedule your coupons to save time working on your store. As mentioned before, you really shouldn't decide on your coupons at the last possible moment. Having a clear start and end date will help you plan for all occasions and different products, all at once. Let customers see all available coupons on their ‘my account’ page. A surprise discount is at times all it takes for your customers to checkout instead of abandoning their cart. This takes the weight away from buyers rather than making them enter the coupon code from an email they saw once in an ad. Control every condition required at checkout to enable coupons. For customers who are buying from another country, free shipping might already have a serious reduction in their cart totals. You can choose whether you must give additional discounts here. The same choices are available for different payment methods as well. Release coupons based on pre-defined user roles. This is perhaps a handy feature to know who availed your coupons at any instant. Customers, subscribers, shop manager, and other contributors can all be added here. Add free products to your Customer’s cart. First-time buyers or customers who have made a specific amount in their cart total can be given a gift as a sign of good hope through your store. This can also double up as an excellent inventory cleaning technique as products that are not on-demand can be given away to make room for fresh stock. Customize coupon styling to match your store’s design. For customers who have logged into your website, displaying all available coupons on their ‘my account’ page is super-encouraging for future sales.

Customize the colors of these coupons using Smart Coupons settings and make them perfect for your store. Having enough coupon balance is perhaps the closest way to get your customers to buy more.

There are even more features in the free version, but since they are minute changes that you will find interesting once you start creating coupons, let’s not extend our discussion into those features too.

Smart Coupons for WooCommerce Premium plugin for advanced users

The free Smart Coupons for WooCommerce plugin is definitely an upgrade from your standard WooCommerce coupon feature. But how about making your coupons even more streamlined for users?

What if you could create coupons based on customer behavior? How about BOGO offers and store credits? The premium plugin of Smart Coupons is truly a leap from basic features to advanced.

Here are some of its advanced features that you might need for future sales:

Create a count down discount sales banner. Needless to say, this feature could be perhaps one of the most attention-grabbing banners on your website. By creating a sense of urgency, your chances for improved conversion just got high. Send Email store credit/coupon to customers. Email campaigns are undoubtedly one of the most effective ways of inviting customers to eCommerce stores. Being one of the most commonly used mediums for customer-client interaction, sending in customized offers for your customers will always be a step in the right direction. BOGO and Store credit to boost conversion. Inviting customers to buy more through buy one get one offers and store credits have more benefits than improving sales numbers. On the bright side, they can help encourage customers to get more value from their orders or even earn future purchase opportunities. BOGO offers can also be employed as a stock clearance method, while store credit could be given to reduce the impact of customer grievances, should any of your products reach your customer at a subpar quality. Create coupons based on customer behavior. Your store will be fully equipped with data that could be used to create tailored discounts for new and existing customers. This marked difference in coupon strategy is a powerful method to increase buying from your store. Allow customers to purchase gift coupons. Enabling future customers with coupons that they could redeem at your store is an excellent strategy for brand promotion. Smart Coupons for WooCommerce helps you create fully customizable gift cards that customers could either use themselves or send to their loved ones via email.

For the complete list of features, check out our premium plugin page here.

The plugin is priced at three distinct price ranges, all based on the number of websites for which the plugin support is required.

Pricing for Smart Coupons from WebToffee (Premium)

Conclusion

Stores are better equipped for conversion if they always have the right coupon strategy employed. Before all of these tiny details of adding coupons overwhelm you, here’s a piece of advice that could help you channel your store to greater returns.

Coupons can be applied on a whim and can quickly drain your ROI before you know it. Apply coupons only if you think they are absolutely necessary to improve the conversion rate for an under-performing product. This will help you understand how each product sells out on a daily basis and lets you better position them in your marketing strategy, where coupons may come as a natural choice.

More than anything, coupon strategies must always be considered as experiments for constant improvement to your ROI. Free and premium plugins are natural advancements of these experiments. So don't jump into premium plugins right away, but rather learn your way into coupons.