Have coupons worked for you?

[JasonK]

I sell more than half my items from an offer that I sent or one I get from the buyer. I decided to create a 15% off coupon to send any time I send an offer. When I send an offer that is generally about the amount I take off, sometimes I take less but only after a bit of back and forth. Well after over a month and 100’s of offers I have yet to see a single person use the coupon. Has anybody had any luck with this method?

[craig rex]

I have used coupons pretty regularly for the last year, both public and private. Like most of eBay’s new seller tools, they are not a guaranteed sale and shouldn’t be looked at like they are, but they can often offer a boost.

I print a packing slip with every order which includes a 20% coupon with the QR code. This leads to a sale very rarely. Maybe 1 in 100 or less. I don’t think most buyers look at the packing slip. But it helps keep me organized when I am shipping, so I will keep using it.

I have had a little more success sending the coupon directly to buyers using the dropdown menu all the way on the right-hand side in My Orders. This was particularly beneficial when eBay would offer occasional coupons and eBay bucks promos but, sadly, those have become almost non-existent. Maybe we will see them again in Q4.

My total sales this year from the 20% coupon, according to eBay’s numbers, are $777. So a little over $100 a month, and maybe some of those sales would have happened anyway. But I also think the “real” sales are slightly higher. I’m not very confident in how eBay tracks promotion sales numbers. I’ve noticed in the past that my sales numbers for markdown sales were far below what actually sold. Likely because best offers aren’t included in those numbers. But I think they should be. Related to that, I had a few times where a buyer used a 20% coupon on one item and then bought a few others using best offer. Technically, only the one item counts as a coupon sale, but I think it’s the coupon which really drives those sales.

Recently, I created a public coupon for 10% off and ran it from June 21st through the July 4th weekend. My total sales with that coupon were almost $500, or about $250 each week. This total doesn’t include best offer sales which were still the majority of my sales, and eBay’s coupons don’t stack with best offers which is frustrating. But I’m sure the 10% off enticed a few buyers to click the buy it now button. Next time I do a public coupon (probably around a holiday), I will probably go to 15% and see how it goes. I might increase my private coupon to 25% in Q4 depending on how sales are going.

A few other tips I can offer about the coupons:

1. Change the settings so buyers can use your coupon unlimited times. The buyers who use coupons really like them, and I’ve had a few buyers who have bought from me three or four times with the coupon.

2. Push the expiration date far out in the future. The coupons I send to buyers have an expiration date of December 31st. Maybe that’s a bit far, but I prefer to set it and forget it with these kinds of things.

3. Be confident about your discount and give it a chance to work. A few days or even a week won’t provide a good measure of how well your coupon is working. I also come across listings all the time with really small discounts like 5% or 7%. I know some sellers work on really small margins, but I would think (hope) that for most of us posting here, we could go down from our buy it now price by 15% or even 30% and still make a nice profit.

Coupons are not a perfect tool, but they are so easy to set up and tweak that I think any seller reading this should try them and see how they work for their store.

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