This is the place for pros to discuss the business side of our coupons feature.

Want to chat about promotions? Strategy? Marketing? Post away right here!

For help or problems with coupons, we have a separate thread here, or you can email our Support Heroes directly.

Originally Posted by Andy This is the place for pros to discuss the business side of our coupons feature. Want to chat about promotions? Strategy? Marketing? Post away right here! For help or problems with coupons, we have a separate thread here, or you can email our Support Heroes directly.

I just want to say "Thank you!" for all of yours and team SmugMug's hard work in getting coupons off the ground and having the patience to do it right. This could not have been easy, but I am excited to get going and start using them.


Blessings,

Tom

Nice to see the coupons module live on the site. I'll be marketing with them hard today on Facebook, Twitter and an e-mail blast. I'll keep you posted on how they work.

Thanks,
Leighton

This will really help with my sales next racing season.

Is there any way to email the coupons to our customers? For example I want to send out an email to people that have already bought our photos and allow them to take 20% off reprints.

Can you explain more on the At Cost coupon?

How does it work on Downloads with no cost and no shipping?

It appears to be dangerous as it has no value limit. I would like to use it give a person perhaps X dollars of purchase at cost just to give some limit on it.

Perhaps that can be in a future update. I am sure you will getting a lot more request for improvements.

Will we see the order that is used on the coupon? We normally do not see orders unless the items are above cost.

DM

Andy, BWG and anyone else...

Thanks so much for this long awaited feature.

The best (and most unbelievable) part is that it happened just in time for a holiday dance recital I'll be shooting. The program goes to print next Monday, so I still have time to add in a coupon code.

I'll be checking this thread regularly for new ideas.

So what's your Christmas strategy? I was thinking of a percentage off coupon on a order above a certain dollar level with the coupon expiring the last day that they could order something in time for Christmas.

I was also thinking of using the dollar off coupons like gift cards, but I'm not sure how to implement that.

Originally Posted by Andy This is the place for pros to discuss the business side of our coupons feature. Want to chat about promotions? Strategy? Marketing? Post away right here! For help or problems with coupons, we have a separate thread here, or you can email our Support Heroes directly.

I love the new coupon feature! Next up, package pricing...? :)
I'd like to show off my specials, and I see that the coupon manager creates those great looking coupons, however, if they are only for my benefit i dont see much point. I've been taking steps to use the pretty graphic, however it's time consuming. I create the coupon, use grab it to copy the image, convert the image to jpg, upload it to a protected gallery, and then embed it in my promo email. Lots of work, is there an easier way Andy?
THANKS!!
Heather

I posted a 15% coupon to facebook about an hour ago, and have already had an order! Thank you SmugMug!

Originally Posted by cosgravestudios I love the new coupon feature! Next up, package pricing...? :) I'd like to show off my specials, and I see that the coupon manager creates those great looking coupons, however, if they are only for my benefit i dont see much point. I've been taking steps to use the pretty graphic, however it's time consuming. I create the coupon, use grab it to copy the image, convert the image to jpg, upload it to a protected gallery, and then embed it in my promo email. Lots of work, is there an easier way Andy? THANKS!! Heather

Heather,

You are right, it would be nice to show the graphic image smugmug is creating. If smugmug has no other solution, it might be easier for you to create a coupon template image of you own (photoshop or other program), save it and upload it to your gallery. That may be easier than trying to rip the one from the screen.

Just a thought.

DM

Originally Posted by Andy This is the place for pros to discuss the business side of our coupons feature. Want to chat about promotions? Strategy? Marketing? Post away right here! For help or problems with coupons, we have a separate thread here, or you can email our Support Heroes directly.

Great start on coupons; however, to hit a home run you need to implement the gallery and product restrictions/bindings. What you have now is virtually identical to one of your main competitors, a service I used to use at one time. What I & many others found is that global coupons are both (a) not very useful and (b) are very dangerous. For example, I create a coupon for 15% off intending for it to be used for prints where I have sufficient margin to cover the discount but then someone uses the coupon to buy a high priced gift item where I don't have a 15% margin -- all of a sudden I'm in the hole. To be really really useful coupons need to be more targetted so that we can do things like:

-- offer an incentive so that people can get a discount on a specific gallery or set of galleries without allowing them to use the discount on all galleries (such as the first week of a new gallery to drive sales or for an old gallery to bring in the stragglers before deleting it).

-- offer incentives for specific products, to get customers to give more consideration to gifts and other products besides orindary prints.

-- to let a specific organization or group get discounts on just their images, without fear of the coupon code leaking out and being used for unintended purchases.

-- etc. etc.

I agree. Coupons definitely need the ability to be tied to a specific album or sharegroup or set of albums or category.

A site-wide 20% off coupon is one thing. But a full print credit (intended to let a customer pick up prints from their purchased "package") doesn't work if the print credit can be applied anywhere on the site.

It's a must have.

On the other hand, a big THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for getting us this far! Outstanding!

Next up: Quantity discounts.

- Discounts if total package purchase exceeds some dollar amount
- Discounts if more than one copy of a specific print is purchased
- Discounts if a subsequent print of the same image (same size or smaller) is purchased

Perhaps a little complicated. But it would help me sell to families where often one large print is purchased for the head of the family and many smaller prints are purchased for the children or siblings.

And, for what it's worth, up until now ... any time a discount (quantity or otherwise) was needed, I was forced to have to do order fulfillment myself, thus taking smugmug completely out of the loop.

Making discounts available means that smugmug finally gets a share in the profits. And I don't mind. It means less work for me and I'm okay with sharing! :)

I'd like to say thanks too! I was hoping coupons would be live by the holidays and you guys came through!

[quote=dwterry]Next up: Quantity discounts.

- Discounts if total package purchase exceeds some dollar amount
quote]

Both the "Amount Off" and "Percent Off" coupons can be set up with a minimum purchase amount.

Originally Posted by dwterry - Discounts if total package purchase exceeds some dollar amount

Using the word "package" throws me a bit, but with the current feature you can set an order minimum to apply the coupon. For example, $20 off an order $100 or more. Or 10% off orders over $20.

Originally Posted by ckysports Is there any way to email the coupons to our customers? For example I want to send out an email to people that have already bought our photos and allow them to take 20% off reprints.

Not yet, other than just a regular share email that includes the coupon code in your message. Thanks for the request!

Originally Posted by drmoon Can you explain more on the At Cost coupon? How does it work on Downloads with no cost and no shipping? It appears to be dangerous as it has no value limit. I would like to use it give a person perhaps X dollars of purchase at cost just to give some limit on it. Perhaps that can be in a future update. I am sure you will getting a lot more request for improvements. Will we see the order that is used on the coupon? We normally do not see orders unless the items are above cost. DM

Currently the at-cost coupon gets you free purchase of digital downloads. We could maybe change that if there was a good case to do so...

I'm not sure how you'd put a limit on it, because it would be hard to draw a line in the sand and decide which products would keep their pro pricing in effect if more products were ordered than were covered by the coupon.

You do see orders placed with at-cost coupons show up in your sales history. An order with a coupon will show up, regardless of whether the prints were marked up.

Originally Posted by SamirD I was also thinking of using the dollar off coupons like gift cards, but I'm not sure how to implement that.

Use a print credit! That's what we designed them for.

-Anne
SmugMug Support Hero

I would suggest to make the feature where we can email to our current customers for re-print coupons. Please include a "SELECT ALL" button on the email list. It is too much work to select them each at a time. I love the coupons though and appreciate your teams hard work ethic.

Next lets get package pricing!

Originally Posted by cosgravestudios I'd like to show off my specials, and I see that the coupon manager creates those great looking coupons, however, if they are only for my benefit i dont see much point.

Yep, we need to help you guys distribute coupons for sure. Thanks for the feedback!

And thanks, too, for those weighing in on gallery and product specific coupons. There's also a great help and feedback thread here: http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=152123 .

-Anne
SmugMug Support Hero