Using Coupons to Engage Prospective and Repeat Buyers

As usual, the inspiration for this post comes from @popeyespostcards excellent Ebay store experiments to improve sales post. A post that is truly in the spirit of this wonderful podcast and community, one that is full of data and worth looking at or returning to so you might think about how you’re spending time on your eBay store.

Since reading that post, I’ve made a fairly consistent effort to explore new methods of encouraging sales. I’ve posted a few times about doing end and relist (or end and sell similar) batches of items without watchers. While end and relist is not a solution for creating new, quality listings, it does seem to offer a brief sales boost of old listings, particularly if your end and relist coincides with an eBay bucks promo or busy sales time. Something to keep in mind as we approach the last rush of the holiday season!

I’ve recently experimented with creating coupons, which you can do for your own store in just a few minutes by going to the Marketing tab in seller hub, then summary and clicking on Create Coupon then following the prompts.

eBay offers two types of coupons: private and public. Private coupons are yours to use any way you like: for example, you can add the coupon code to your invoice or send the coupon directly to a buyer or watcher. Public coupons appear directly below your listing in red text, for example “Save 10% on this listing.”

I created a 15% off private coupon in June and have attached it to every invoice (I include a printed invoice in every item I mail), as well as sending the coupon directly to any buyer who left positive feedback. According to my promotions tab, this has resulted in $129.14 in sales.

I created a 10% off public coupon for Black Friday weekend, available for use by any buyer who saw any of my listings. This resulted in $377.91 in sales.

I don’t present this information expecting anyone to draw any broad conclusions from it. This is one anecdote from one seller, and I have developed a pretty specific niche (trading cards) over the past few years. I’m sure that some of these sales would have happened regardless of the 10% or 15% discount, and some of them were unique to finding the right buyer or (especially in my niche) selling at the right time.

But coupons are very easy to set up, less than five minutes. So if you’re a seller who would accept an offer of 10 or 15 percent off on any or all items in your store, it’s worth creating a public or private coupon to see if that leads to some additional quick sales for you. I think there are impulsive buyers out there who are easily persuaded by the allure of a guaranteed “x% off” below your listing, and I think some potential repeat buyers can be convinced to buy from you again with an additional discount.

I plan on continuing to experiment with both coupons, and will update the post with any results that are noteworthy. But I wanted to offer up this info now, in case it may be useful to anyone who isn’t aware that you can create a coupon for your store or wasn’t sure about the different options available.