How To Utilize Bounce Back Coupon Offers To Increase Your Business
Without a doubt, THE highest impact marketing we've EVER utilized was using "bounce-back" coupons! Bounce back coupons are coupons that accompany a delivered product within the product box or with the product statement or invoice. The coupons can be auto-generated right onto the invoice or statement, or can be an additional coupon or flier accompanying the product or statement. The goal of a bounce back coupon is to entice the client to "bounce back" or return to place an additional order. Bounce back coupons can also be emailed to the client with their order confirmation.
I'm not joking when I say that by simply starting our bounce back system and practice of including a bounce back coupon with every delivered product increased our revenue by $200,000 - $300,000 per year without the need to do additional marketing and saved our sales people valuable time by not having to initiate the process of contacting and closing the customer on a similar or new product. It was a morale AND revenue booster.
The best part about bounce back coupons is that they can be applied to almost any industry. We know, because we utilized them in a very diverse line of products and services from a franchise hair salon to embroidery business to school fundraising. I bet, with a little creative thinking, you could design and implement a bounce back coupon offer for your business too!
Initiating a bounce back system is fairly easy. The trick is to "systematize" it so that the coupon is generated and placed with the product without having to rely on staff (not that staff is unreliable, but it's much easier and successful if the coupon makes it into the box without the possibility of human error.)
We accomplished this by using a database program to generate our statements and invoices and by attaching a bounce back coupon as part of the statement or invoice print out which was necessary to ship the product (the statement had the mailing address, so it was impossible for staff not to generate the statement.) Even if you're not database savvy, you can still implement a bounce back coupon program by having your accounting person attach the bounce back coupon with the invoice or statement, or by keeping a stack of bounce back coupons next to your shipping area.) Some POS systems probably have the ability to attach or include a bounce back offer or coupon.
A few things to consider about your bounce back coupon system:
1) What's your "call to action." Our call to action was making the offer date sensitive. We gave our clients a fixed amount of time to respond (depending on the product or service, this varied from 7 days to 60 days.)
2) What's your offer going to be? You may want to make it a fairly aggressive offer. Consider that even with an aggressive offer, you'll still probably come out way ahead verses having to extend an entirely new marketing campaign. We found that anything above 15% to 20% usually returned good results.
3) Are you going to offer an upsell? For example, "Take 20% off your next purchase AND receive a buy-one get-one FREE on any of our exciting new line of xxxxxxxxx."
4) Are you going to make your offer date sensitive? Almost any offer should have an expiration date and disclaimers pertinent to your industry.
5) Are you going to initiate a follow-up system? This can be easily done by sending out a reminder email or (if worthwhile) a follow-up phone call by your sales staff to remind the customer and to try to close the deal if the bounce back coupon didn't accomplish this on its own.
