Marketing Tools Part 2: Using Coupons on Your Point of Sale Receipts to Increase Sales

People are always looking for ways to cut costs and save money. Adding coupons to your point of sale receipt paper rolls is a great way to help customers save while increasing sales at the same time. Coupon incentives encourage customers to buy something that they may not have tried otherwise. You can experiment with using a coupon to promote a new product or offer a BOGO or % off promotion. Here is a side by side comparison of two coupons that illustrates how you can use a coupon to drive sales and awareness.

Recently pcAmerica wrote a great article that outlined several tips for creating effective coupons that we found very informative, and we hope you will as well: 

1. Make your coupon specific. If your coupon is good on Tuesday, June 19, 2012, then it is only good on that day. If your offer is too good, you can reduce your discount or change your offer the following week.

2. Offering a deal for your customers gets your customers used to reading and redeeming your coupons. It not only keeps your old customers coming back, it gets you new customers.

3. Think of it this way. If you offer your customers 90% off on their next purchase or meal, you're going to get a really high coupon redemption rate. On the other hand, if you offer your customers 5% off on any Tuesday between 4:50 PM and 5:00 PM, you are likely not to see anyone redeem your coupon.

4. If you really need to, you can use unique coupon codes just by stamping or printing a unique number on every coupon that you issue.

5. Likewise, you can track email coupons by asking recipients to submit their email address when redeeming a coupon and comparing it to your list of issued coupons.

Did you find these tips useful? Do you currently have a couponing program in place? Do you find it effective? Are there any stumbling blocks that you are looking to overcome?