Coupon Guide
Why and How Photographers Should use Coupons to Increase Online Sales
Coupons are a central way to develop intimate, long-term relationships with clients and make the most of your and your clients online galleries. They are also the extra push to close the deal. Below, are some coupon rules of thumb, ideas, and a peek at how we at Pic-Time can and will help you out.
See our Marketing Platform post to learn how to create, send, and track coupons.
2018 Holiday and Black Friday Coupons
How to be Smart and Strategic with Coupons
The coupon industry is a huge ever-expanding industry, and with the upcoming holidays, the peak of the season, clients will be searching, expecting, and also swamped with coupons. Below are some dos and don’ts for you, so you stand out, stay on top of the trend, and develop campaigns tailored to your clients. Learn how to plan coupon campaigns effectively to maximize your potential revenue, for the holiday season but also for the long term, beginning with the New Year.
Pic-Time Marketing Dashboard
Set an Expiration Date
If coupons are to be precious and special, they should be time-limited, so they encourage your client to be responsive and alert. We all work better with deadlines. Having an expiration date moves to action. From what we have gathered, 1-2 weeks is the sweet point.
However, if you’re going for a more aggressive campaign, let’s say of discounts between 50%-70% then you might want to make it even shorter, a flash sale. Otherwise, you might lose impact and value.
Set Expiration for Coupons
Plan Your Dates
Be there for the best selling days of the year with a nice spread of different types of promotions over the year and particularly during Holiday season. In 2017, the best dates for sales, according to Pic-Time analysis were from 11/27 (three days after Black Friday) and 12/16 (seven days before Christmas).
People tend to redeem coupons towards the expiration date (last minute), so make sure to plan them in a way that factors this in. With Pic-Time you can set a few options of reminders that will be sent automatically to your client.
Set Reminders for Coupons
Make it personal, don’t miss important days in your clients’ life. Pic-Time’s automatic scheduling makes it easy to schedule coupons a year in advance. Once your client’s gallery is completed, you can already schedule a coupon to be sent automatically a year later. If your business model is taking the galleries offline - coupons will automatically bring the gallery back to life. Clients will then be able to reconnect with images having not seeing them for a while, which makes them even more valuable.
Automatic Coupon Scheduling
Don’t Over Do It
Even during the holiday season it is a good idea to spread coupons moderately and thoughtfully. Make sure not to overwhelm with coupons and make them precious and special; not too often.
Plan Pricing and Discounts
Make sure you price your products in a way that will give you a buffer to the discount. The usual discount can vary from 20%-30% off and the more aggressive ones can go up to 70%.- 80%.
Set Prices for Products
Free Products
Free products are great, we all love getting free items! Offer your clients a relevant free product after spending a certain amount in the store. For example, give your clients a free calendar for the New Year after spending x amount in the store. Treat them with the product that they would like or might need at the right moment.
Free Calendar Coupon
Select the Right Products
According to our analysis at Pic-Time; the 5 best selling products during November and December 2017 were: Prints - 5x7, 4x6, 8x10 (Semi-Gloss), Greeting Cards, Frames leading colors - barnwood and white, leading size 5x7, Albums leading size 10x10, leading linen cover, Calendars and Gallery Boards. We’ve recently added new labs and products like Deckled Prints that might impact these sales analytics this season, and we will of course share our findings again next year.
Limit Coupons to Specific Products
The More the Merrier - Expand your Audience
Create a valuable list of emails by collecting emails when entering a gallery. You can do so in your Pic-Time settings under “preferences”. Creating a small collection of images or a slideshow, immediately after the event, will make it easier for clients to share with their families and friends.
Create the Right Coupons for the Right Audience
Once you have a good sized email list, consider what types of coupons work for each one of your clients. For every event you photograph, there’s the small circle of the nuclear family and then the broader circle of guests, friends, and relatives. Usually, for the inner circle, given their interest in more images, you can offer everything, and include more complex products with a variety of images, like Albums and Magazines. For the broader circle who usually have an interest in fewer images mainly of themselves (the good ones!) - you would want to highlight products that are based on one or a few images - Greeting Cards, Frames, Deckled Prints and Gallery Boards.
Choose Targeted Coupon Recipients
Pic-Time offers flexible coupons - coupons offering discounts by percentage, by a set sum of money, promotions by products (free Calendar, or Frame), promotions by services (Free Shipping), or by special deals (extra one for free for minimum orders).
Flexible Coupons and Coupon Templates
Reach out Across Mediums
Make the most of social media - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & LinkedIn pages. About 71% of consumers follow their favorite brands on social media to get coupons. Social media also generates a buzz around you, together with time-limited offers. It allows you to reach out to more potential clients. For these kinds of promos you’d want to use the public code with nice copy for your coupon.
Coupon with a Public Code
Make Beautiful Coupons
Particularly during the holiday season, but typical to our highly digital era, it is crucial to stand out and draw attention! Whether expected or surprising, personally created or using Pic-Time based templates, coupons should be beautiful. Always; and should preferably include an image. Think of them as gifts, or greeting cards. Don’t rely on too much text and make sure to have an image that touches, or draws your clients attention. Include images from their own galleries, and use keywords smartly (SALE, Free Shipping, Gift). A great selection of coupons are already available for you at Pic-Time. You can choose images with typography that will match your brand, or make an image of your own.
Pic-Time Coupon Designs
Make Sure they are Really Easy to Use
Life is complicated but coupons cannot be. If you want your clients to follow your invitation via coupons, make it simple for them, with clarity on the terms of the coupon (what it might cover, how and what is their expiration) and by providing a pleasant, quick and easy experience in terms of the technical process.
Have an Extra Easy “Ready Product Coupon” (for the Laziest Clients)
For those clients without the extra time, whether busy or just not into spending time with their computers creating their own products, a coupon with a pre-made product is a great option! Sometimes it’s just easier to buy something ready made. Just create any product for them and send it as a coupon. That way, they are only few clicks away from the shopping cart.
Send a Product Coupon
Know your Client’s
It’s a process and it takes time, but don’t give up. Images are in fact more valuable as time goes by, so, take the time to learn from experience, to learn your clients, to understand what’s working and what’s not. Think how many reminders and incentives you might need to make you buy something.
Track Client Coupon Campaigns
Types of Coupons: Ideas for the Whole Year Round
Personalized Coupons
Personalized coupons are perhaps the most precious ones for a long lasting relationship, as they truly create intimacy with your clients. They show love, care, and require a real personal touch.
There are endless ways to walk this path and plan your way, in terms of both content (types of coupons) and design. Personal coupons are “surprise coupons” coupons your clients do not expect, celebrating events in your clients life - weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, grandchildren's birthdays, or other special occasion. Give them a surprising touch, and try to address surprising events as well! 60 percent of customers, say the “surprise perk” is their favorite way to receive a deal or a discount. Plan ahead by scheduling them a year in advance and design them with a personal touch.
Use one very beautiful photo from their gallery, and add a clear personal text saying something about the event, for instance, a coupon can be a gift for “3 years since becoming a grandma/mom - free frame with one of your grandchild’s images”.
Coupons Based on Occasions
The Personal Photographer Coupon
Equally important are coupons celebrating moments in your life as a photographer or a person that you are willing to share with your clients: “I am celebrating 10 years of photography”, “I won an award”, “I bought a new camera”, “I have a newborn”, or “I’d like to celebrate with you..” Such coupons increase trust in you as a person, create empathy, and humanize your business.
Client Appreciation Coupons
Perhaps the most important personal coupons you must have, should be personal coupons rewarding consistent loyal clients, celebrating 5 years/10 galleries/20 purchases etc. Make sure to schedule them on your calendar. They are essential to maintaining your clients loyalty in the long run. You can schedule them for all your clients, on a yearly “client appreciation week” offering different discounts and treats to consistent clients, on scale or by sending them in person.
Client Appreciation Coupon
Globally Conscious Coupons
These coupons give a personal touch to your business, draw special attention, granting calendric (“expected” or “normative”) coupons a more edgy, up-to-date character.
Do you care about the environment? Women's Day around the corner? Send your client a coupon with one of your stunning images offering them an earth day discount on all of their images/portraits in nature, or free shipping on all women images they love. Do you have clients who own pets? Send them something on Dog Day. Breast Cancer Awareness Day? Pride Month? Create surprising coupons in which your personality stands out. Stay on the positive side always, and dare to expose them to moments they haven't heard of.
Earth Day Coupon
Locally Conscious Coupons
Most of us photographers, even in the digital era, are situated somewhere and work within a specific place or a community. Engaging your locality could be one of those things you do, from time to time, to surprise your customers, reminding them you are right there, with them, a part of their world, that you care and have shared memories with them.
Locally conscious coupons can be dedicated to a special day of choice, formal or informal (“the first day of snow in our town, 20% off winter images with each purchase”, “discounts on local images on local election day,”), they can address shared love of landscapes (“Tree celebration! Discounts for all photos with/of local trees”) like favorite trees, parks, or a beach in a particular town. Lastly, you can use coupons to promote support of local organizations, institutions, or initiatives (20% of your purchase goes to local shelters/school/community gardens) strengthening your position as a community photographer.
Coupons Based on your Client’s Cart
If your clients have items in their cart, you can send them a targeted coupon to provide a final push and make their decision easier. In this way you are giving them what they really needed and at the best timing!
Free Shipping Coupon
Coupons: The Added Benefit
Turn your online galleries into that old town photography store
Our online galleries and stores of the Digital Era are often regarded as an alienating impersonal experience. We think they should be taken as a great opportunity to establish ongoing, high-quality, and long-term personal relationships with clients. We also see coupons as a great way to pursue that.
Coupons keep your clients with you
Stay in constant touch. If in past times, we used to walk by our town’s photographer shop daily, then coupons replace this encounter. Most simply, being a mean of communication, they are like a quick phone call. They technically make you and your client stay in touch year round; celebrating together holidays, other events on the calendar, your clients’ personal moments, and yours too.
Pic-Time Coupon Templates
Coupons take your relationship a step further
Coupons might also deepen and personalize your relationship with your clients. They change the quality of your relationship, rather than being merely a reminder. Using coupons, you become your client’s curator, attentive to and appreciative of beautiful, significant moments in their life, reminding them of these moments, rendering meanings to these moments, and being part of their life over the year and over years and time.
On the other hand, coupons let your clients know you better as well! Knowing which events and moments you care about, learning about special moments and development in your life which you choose to celebrate with them. Reminding them of your creativity and talent.
Lastly, and very important, coupons are also ways to appreciate and express your gratitude towards clients’ consistency and loyalty to you. Grow old together, and maintain this loyalty for years to come.
This is what all of us want, no? Reciprocal, stable but developing relationships for a community of clients. Good news is that this is quite a fun process, and you as a perceptive, sensitive, creative photographer, having intimate knowledge of your client, is natural.
