We found the following story from one of our clients amusing but also quite instructive in terms of marketing savvy. Basically, this vendor was exploring the discount coupon functionality in SpringBoard and decided to hop over to a popular 3rd party coupon aggregator, RetailMeNot.com, to see what the state of affairs was there.
They found that the coupons still being displayed at RetailMeNot were expired coupons. As they wrote us: "It's not terribly scientific, but my own experience is that I will sometimes abandon an order if I can't get a coupon." That's when the proverbial light-bulb lit up, the Good Idea hit, and this client decided to create a $1 off coupon humorously named "BUCKOFF." He submitted it to RetailMeNot. By the very next day, nine orders had come through using the BUCKOFF coupon. I can relate to this. I've used similar coupons for purchases of shared server accounts in the past. It's a small user thrill to save money, even if in small increments. As our client writes (here comes the second light-bulb moment): A $1 off coupon is close enough to $0 that this is worth leaving out there, all the time. It's clear that a not small portion of users look for coupons, and if a $1 off coupon saves more than about 3% of orders, it will pay for itself. As they always say, "your results may vary." But we found this little coupon story inspiring. There's a sparkle of marketing brilliance to it. Source: http://www.fastspring.com/blog/
