162,000 discount codes analyzed reveals the truth about what converts
There's this thing that happens when you run an e-commerce store. You know you need to discount, but you're terrified. Terrified of training customers to wait for sales. Terrified of looking cheap. So you do nothing, or worse, you slap WELCOME10 on your popup and call it a day. Meanwhile, the big brands? They're discounting constantly. Just invisibly.
Cara Marin from Seguno looked at 162,000 discount code sets. Real data from real stores. And what she found flips everything we thought we knew. The most successful stores discount more, not less. They just do it smarter. With unique codes. With segmentation. With strategies that preserve brand value while driving conversions.
The revelation that changes everything: it's not about the discount. It's about the delivery. 20% off might be the magic number, but 10% is secretly almost as effective. Gift with purchase is used 6X more by Plus stores. And those customer service recovery codes? They're turning angry customers into superfans. This isn't theory. This is what actually works.
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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Kurt Elster • 00:00.001
This episode is sponsored in part by Swim. Okay, here's a depressing stat. 70% of shoppers who want your products never actually buy them. They browse, they consider, then they forget. That's revenue walking out the door. Swim Wishless Plus turns browsers into buyers. Customers save products they want, get notified when prices drop, or items restock. You can also engage them in personalized fashion through your marketing or sales outreach. It's like having a personal shopper reminding them to come back and buy from you instead of your competitors. And 45,000 stores already use it, and it only takes five minutes to install. You could try it free today for 14 days. Go to get swim. com slash curt. That's swimwithay. com slash curt. Turn those maybe later into sales today. Get swim. com Alright, we're talking discount codes today, and I want to lead with a delightful piece of trivia I learned. Maybe you already suspected this. What is the what's the right Amount for a percentage off discount code. 15, 20, 25. Obviously the higher the better in the eyes of the customer. But like where What's the level where it it is no longer offensive, where they're going to take the effort to take that offer? And we're gonna learn from our guest today that it turns out that is probably twenty percent. is the right answer. Yeah, our guest today has studied after uh issuing a hundred and something thousand discount codes across various stores. They're gonna share with us what they learned. We're joined by Kara Marin. from Seguno Bulk Discount Bot and the Bulk Discount Bot has issued a lot of discounts in bulk. Kara, what uh what are we discussing today? Discount codes, but what did you do to have these learnings? What happened?
Cara Marin • 02:05.500
So well, we had 162,000 discount code sets that have been created in our app. And we wanted to see what patterns were happening at that scale. And what we found was that there are some nice low-hanging fruit, both for bigger brands and for smaller brands that uh at least I think more brands should be using to make more money.
Kurt Elster • 02:25.740
And this uh this app bulk discount code bot, I've used this for years at this point. And the use case for us was a client says, hey We're running this big promo, and maybe it's like you know, we've partnered with someone and they for whatever reason they need uh 10,000 discount codes go, you know, something like that. And then, you know, we need a way to do that. And this bulk discount bot, as the name would imply, does just that. You're like, hey, this is what I need. And it just generates the codes and here's your spreadsheet go. Um very useful for things like that, a handy utility. But now we're we're taking that. All right, I started with mentioning the that 20% off as our magic number. I think that's probably like the thing, you know, most people wonder is well, what's the right percent? You know, what's the right discount amount? Let's let's start with that as our our quick takeaway for the folks who may not listen to anything else. What uh give me your thoughts there.
Cara Marin • 03:15.520
Yeah, so so what you're talking about is we found that the most popular percentage off was 20% Um, but I would say what's even more interesting is the second most popular one. Do you wanna take a a stab at it or I just go for it?
Kurt Elster • 03:27.100
Uh well I'm guess it's similar, so I'm either gonna go with fifteen or twenty-five.
Cara Marin • 03:31.220
So so the second most so the most popular is 20, and the second most popular is actually 10%. And I don't have we could we could theorize as to why that is, right? But all I know is that's what we found in our 162,000 discount code sets. And so your starting question of what's that less offensive offer, it may actually be 10%. That's really popular.
Kurt Elster • 03:52.060
All right. It's a you know a lot of split testing has to happen here, but gives you a good starting point. So why why bother to analyze 162,000 discount codes?
Cara Marin • 04:03.120
Just to look for patterns and what we could find. So like you said, the app uh really to date has been more of a utility. And so people have a reason already, they're coming to the app and they want to generate unique discount codes. Uh and because the app's been around a while and has some some solid traction, we're like, okay, what can we find in this data about what the best practices are for discounting? Um and something to me that's really exciting about unique discount codes is usually when people think about them, they're thinking about sites like Honey, uh, where you have the coupon leaks happening and then you're losing revenue uh because people are just letting that browser extension fill in a coupon code. And that's a serious issue, but why they're even cooler is because they let you experiment with targeted offers. So if you want to see for your customers if 20% or 10% has better efficiency and better margins and all that. you can use targeted discount codes to offer one segment something and another segment something else and really find what works best for your brand.
Kurt Elster • 05:00.600
So what and that you know in contrast to either an automatic discount or a like I just have one unlimited use code. Like i the bulk discount code situation, generally I'm doing one time one use codes.
Cara Marin • 05:15.039
Yep.
Kurt Elster • 05:15.520
Yeah, they're unique.
Cara Marin • 05:16.720
So they're all they're all unique to the person. So versus welcome ten, it's like welcome blah blah blah blah blah blah XYZ A B C right, it's something that's unique just to you.
Kurt Elster • 05:26.100
And so if I'm feeling cheeky, I'll use uh a a little bit of scripting. And I I know the most common codes. You know, you have a script just run through like several hundred codes to see what comes back. Ugh that one rarely does it work, you know, because I'm often I'm I'm looking at like more sophisticated merchants. The, you know, not something I would you'd want to do to like an independent shop. But okay, in this data, what's the thing that stood out? What surprised you most?
Cara Marin • 05:56.100
So I'd say one thing that did not surprise me, uh, but May surprise other people, probably will not, but it I think is somewhat interesting as a starting point, is that larger brands offer discounts, at least unique discounts, more often than smaller brands Uh and to me the reason for that is because they have resources dedicated to defining discounts Setting up marketing lifecycle discounts, affiliate discounts, experimenting with what discounts work best. And then these small brands kind of are like, oh, that sounds like so much. I'm just gonna do welcome 10, welcome 20 Uh and the truth is that there are especially popular ones within the larger brands that are so easy to set up that I think all smaller brands should set up too and use that just to drive more revenue. So one of the best starting ones is that welcome offer, where instead of doing a blanket welcome 10, welcome 20, you use a unique code in your welcome offer. And what that does is that really incentivizes your customers to actually sign up for email, sign up for SMS in order to get that discount. And then you can nurture them from there if they don't make the purchase immediately.
Kurt Elster • 07:02.120
And it sounds to me like you've got this, you were able to segment this by Shopify plan type. So plus versus non-plus.
Cara Marin • 07:09.000
Yes. Yeah, we did plus versus non-plus, which internally we use that terminology a lot. I feel like that could be a little confusing. to other people. So just think like big brand or smaller brand is usually yeah.
Kurt Elster • 07:21.880
I think Shopify calls it uh they refer to like plus and core. Is it cores they call non plus? But yeah, all right, big small. Um, we're gonna distinguish by plan here. I mean what there's gotta be a difference or trend in there. What's the difference between plus and non plus as it comes to discount codes? Who's discounting more?
Cara Marin • 07:39.660
So the biggest thing is plus is discounting a lot more. Uh so looking at um we broke it down by DMV tier. So if you look at uh DMV of twenty million or more. They're discounting like at least twice as often as the second tier and it just kind of goes down from there. So they're discounting more, they're making more money. But they're using targeted unique discount codes so that it doesn't look like they're offering discounts all the time splashed on their website that could reduce uh like the value of their brand. Uh so Smaller brands should be doing it too. Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 08:15.240
And then are there beyond just like volume of discounting, are there particular campaigns that seem to separate, you know, the small fish and the big fish?
Cara Marin • 08:25.240
Yeah, so one thing that really surprised me is gift with purchase or buy X get Y is used six times more often by larger brands than by smaller brands. Uh and gift with purchase is basically uh over a certain cart size, you say you're gonna get a free something. Um, and in conversations with customers beyond the the report, I've learned that that is such an effective way for many brands to boost average order value. Um and one of the tricky things there is you have to think about what's what does your catalog look like? Like do you have uh are your uh items mostly $200 and you have a $10 thing to offer? Uh or is there something in the middle? Because if the gift uh is really, really cheap relative to the like product that the customer has come in to buy. Um It's it's probably not gonna work as well. But when you have that bigger spread, then basically you're able to get rid of excess inventory and give customers something they're really excited about and get them to buy more.
Kurt Elster • 09:25.140
I am so thrilled you mentioned my favorite promo, free gift with purchase. Last week we put live for the first time our our new apps listing on Shopify promo party, it only does one thing. It does free gift with purchase. And it's because this is my favorite promo. We talk about it so often. It comes up so often because you're right, it it is so successful. Um at driving average order value at being like such a great offer that's not devaluing the brand. Oh, I'm just getting excited about FGWP. Um all right, larger merchants are using it more. How much more?
Cara Marin • 09:59.400
So it depends on how you break it down, but uh yeah, depends on how you break it down. Significantly more for sure. I would say at least twice as much as mostly what you see along different lines. And then where it gets even more interesting is what are some of the use cases that Plus merchants are using it for that core merchants could benefit from? And We've talked about marketing lifecycle. We could get into more of that. And a very interesting one that I would say is one of the most surprising things to me is how often it's used for affiliate programs. Um and so usually you think of unique codes, you're thinking of direct mail, you're not thinking of affiliate programs. But that is that is a very top use case for us. And basically what Um what merchants are doing is they're usually if they have like an affiliate program at scale, they'll upload codes to a provider like Mention Me and use that to um ensure that they have accurate at least last such attribution for their affiliates. If it's a smaller affiliate program, you can just give them the codes manually and that will work too. Though I've heard less of that. Um, and what that does is what I hear from brands is more and more they want to work with influencers, they want to have an affiliate program as a key. Um marketing stream and it costs money and they want to be able to measure results and that can get really tricky. So using unique codes ensures that you know where where your customers are coming from.
Kurt Elster • 11:22.740
Hmm. Yeah. No, it's about it's about tracking and you're right. It does it gets you that last touch of attribution in like a a generally more reliable way. Um, because we're not dealing at this point we're not dealing with cookies. That's what's great about the discount codes. I mean, that's like essentially the name of the discount code is first party data for you. So when All right, going back, like 20% tends to be our top performing percentage. 10% is our second I noticed it didn't go higher. Is there a threshold where higher doesn't perform as well? Like if somebody comes at me, they're like, get 80% off. That is immediately suspicious.
Cara Marin • 12:03.640
Yeah, yeah, I think it's a really good question. To the biggest thing I've heard, this isn't in the report, but just in talking to customers, is that there are some larger brands that in the past discounted really heavily. So like 40% discounts all the time on everything. Uh and without unique discount codes, just like 40%, 40%, 40%, 40. And what that does is especially after like a year or two, you may see people are buying and maybe that's okay for your margins. But now a year or two in, nobody wants to buy at full price, right?
Kurt Elster • 12:32.680
Or even clearly.
Cara Marin • 12:34.600
Yes, you taught them not to. And so um what those brands tend to do is not stop discounting, but move to unique discount codes where instead of having those blanket discounts all the time on your app, uh on your website, uh, you have unique discount codes that are tied to a behavior, like you just bought something or um Browse abandonment, we would we want to see even more of that. Um and what that does is it lets you still drive revenue from discounts, but instead of having those splashy discounts everywhere, they're much more discreet. And so it it lets you preserve I'm not discounting all the time. You're not you're not gonna see these steep discounts all the time. That results in a better lifetime value of the customer.
Kurt Elster • 13:16.860
So it sounds like we want more like event triggered personalized offers versus, you know, site-wide sale twice a month. Yeah. And browse abandonment came up. Okay, I want to make an important distinction here. Cart abandonment, I think people are familiar with in you is like, hey, you left items in your cart. As a reminder. Then the second one's like, hey, get you know, free shipping, get 10% off, get whatever. And then hey, your your discount's about to expire. That is our that I think is our bare bones but trustworthy card abandonment flow. What's a typical offer in that, do you know? And then you mentioned browse abandonment. That I love, and I don't see it enough. Similar concept. They are on the site, they look at a product and leave. So we're like, hey. You did you see something you like? And we show them their product again. Very rarely do I pair that with a discount. Tell me about um Browse and card abandonment discounts.
Cara Marin • 14:08.820
So one thing we saw with those is looking at mark I would call that uh a marketing lifecycle event, right? So it's a behavior and then you may want to do marketing based off of it. So other ones would be the welcome new subscriber offer, the post-purchase offer. win back offers, those are the three most popular um marketing lifecycle offers we see. And then with browse abandonment and cart abandonment, to me, just thinking about myself as a consumer, Those are such good touch points to reach out at, right? Especially if you've added something to the cart, you really are expressing interest. And for some reason, we see even with our large merchants, that is way underused Uh so it's used significantly less than welcome, post-purchase, or win back. I don't have a reason why. Your guess is as good as mine.
Kurt Elster • 14:52.259
I think they're using it. They're viewing it as you know, it's more aggressive. Like I don't want to be spammy. I hear that one a lot. Oh, interesting. Mm-hmm. And some of those, it's like, okay, it's it's not spammy. It it is just a a normal, helpful notification. Plus at this point, I think everybody's inbox is a free-for-all. I mean, like who's really looking through their emails anymore? There's just so much in there. Especially now. Like If you're concerned it's spammy, then I think like run it in November, December, and then you know, you're gonna see that revenue and then not want to turn it off later. But you could, you know, but I think like free for all at this moment. You know, it's as far if we're thinking as to like what's holding them back, either they're not thinking they haven't tried it, they're not considering it, they don't know it's there, or I don't want to do it because it's too much. But that's where, you know, like a feature in Clavio like um smart sending will just in you could have it' not send the emails conditionally if the person has like just gotten something so you're not bearing them. So November, December, I'd recommend turning that off. Here's a word from our sponsor, Zippify. You know why they call it Black Friday? It's when businesses finally dig out of the red and turn real profit. Wanna squeeze every penny from your Black Friday sale? One click-up sale is the easiest money you'll make all season. OCU automatically increases average order value by up to 30%. With AI-powered upsells at every step of your customer journey. Plus there's a new tool built right in. Zippify Post Profit. Post Profit monetizes your thank you page with brand safe ads from partners like Hulu, GoDaddy, and Disney Plus. W Doesn't cost you anything. Just switch it on and get paid pure profit for every view automatically. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas. Earn up to thirty percent more from every order all year long. Don't leave money on the table this holiday season. Go to zipify dot com slash curt for your thirty day free trial. That's zipify dot com slash K U R T. Any thoughts on like discount codes or promos in relation to average order value? I know that one that's a little open-ended.
Cara Marin • 17:02.040
That is open-ended. So the the biggest one I have for that is back to our favorite gift with purchase. uh were that uh nice that I've heard uh especially in conversations with customers and then it's interesting that it's used six times more often by plus merchants than core merchants. That just blows my mind.
Kurt Elster • 17:22.699
Yeah. Because it's not like it is not limited to No. CLUT. Like if you're listening and you're not unplus and you're thinking you can't run free gift with purchase because of that, it is not true. I don't think it was ever true.
Cara Marin • 17:32.660
Yeah. No, it's it's so I've just heard that's a great way to boost average order value. No Um and then other things to think about are uh that are outside of the scope of just unique discount codes, but are Do you wanna like if your typical average order value is $59, then you wanna try to offer a discount if you get to $69, right? So Yeah. It's different for every brand, but it's just thinking about how can you push that up a little bit more.
Kurt Elster • 17:57.700
Um that's what's great about those the FGWP discounts. is you're saying like, hey, you like to get the row, it's it is tiered and tied to an AOV. So if my AOV is 50, you're right. Like, okay, let's add 20% to that. And then that's the threshold to get the free gift with purchase, but it become you know, I'm not discounting the core catalog, so I don't have this this problem. Um I think the other thing that helps across all promotions is novelty. And so that free gift with purchase, one of the most successful campaigns I've ever seen was for a client Hoonigan a few years ago, where the free gift with purchase was an enamel pin. And then they changed which pin you got every day. And so they're like, that's a reason to email the customer and say, hey, you know, today, different pin, like free gift for purchase, new pin. Um, and then also like create that excitement. And it's a pattern. By day three, I'm like wondering what the next days is gonna be. And so if the person's looking for just like give me the reason to buy, there it is. And then if they're not interested, okay, they don't feel like they're missing out.
Cara Marin • 18:59.320
Very cool. I haven't I haven't heard of rotating the gift with purchase. I think that's a super cool idea. And then especially if you think about someone who purchases today and maybe is going to purchase is is interested in purchasing again soon within the next week. Rotating that gift with purchase uh is definitely gonna move them over the line. So very cool idea.
Kurt Elster • 19:17.600
So then all right, in your in your report, I see mention of a thing called prospecting codes. And I was kind of confused, like, prospecting code, is that the same as I think that's a welcome offer.
Cara Marin • 19:32.280
So welcome offer is you sign up for email or SMS and you have actively said like, hello brand, engage with me, right?
Kurt Elster • 19:41.080
I've raised my hand and asked to be engaged with.
Cara Marin • 19:43.720
Yeah, right. Uh prospecting is you may not have even heard of the brand. Uh and now you're gonna receive communication from them. So you might think of this as direct mail. It's a really common use case for direct mail, though direct mail is for other is also for customer attention I see a lot of the time.
Kurt Elster • 19:59.420
Yeah win back.
Cara Marin • 20:00.740
Yeah, exactly. Um, but it's it's a unique code to someone who has not given you their email, their SMS, the any information. They haven't signed up for your brand, but you think could be a good fit for your brand. And so it's it's getting them over the threshold, hopefully getting them to your site because of the communication that they get from you.
Kurt Elster • 20:22.560
Well you you mentioned direct mail. A yeah that like for direct mail, you need every piece of mail realistically to track efficacy should have its own unique coupon code. Um like you brought it up. I I just got one over the weekend. It showed up on a Friday. It was for Christmas lights. It was from a a site that unf it kills me that the site's not on Shopify. Christmas lights, etc. And Saturday I put up my Christmas lights, discovered I'd burned a whole bunch out over the course of uh storing them, and then ended up using that coupon code to purchase, you guessed it, more Christmas lights for Christmas lights, et cetera. And so they will know, you know, the moment I put that coupon code in, they know exactly the postcard that came to me personally is the one that gets the credit for that sale. Um and yeah, direct mail, I think, you know, under underutilized channel, but of course I'm I'm biased in that. I'm an investor in postpilot that does exactly this. It's direct mail for uh e-commerce. Tell me, do you have any any thoughts or notes on like offers in these direct mail pieces?
Cara Marin • 21:24.460
Yeah, so one of the um, and we're we're hoping to add an integration with Postpilot, so very cool. Uh uh, but um one of the the biggest things I've heard as an issue that brands run into is They'll have a typical welcome offer of 20%, and then they'll put a 20% unique coupon code in their prospecting direct mail. And then people will not use the unique code even up to 80% of the time and they track it in other ways Um, because the offer is the same. And so the best way around that is make sure that your unique discount code offered in direct mail is better than any welcome offer. So if welcome offer is 20, then your unique discount code for prospecting should be 25. Uh just because otherwise people get to the site and then they're like, oh, it's the same thing. It's already there. I don't need to remember the code. So that's a big Um big thing to keep in mind. Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 22:19.200
Yeah, that it it's always it's disappointing. You're like, wow, you went through all this effort and then I go to this site and the code on this site is better than what You went through the effort of mailing me? Come on. The um all right. My experience, my clientele is almost exclusively US And then I, you know, we have a couple Canadians in there. So North American. So like my e-commerce worldview, very narrow. Do you have And I'm assuming that like most of this data is you know also is similarly North American. Are there are there con is there a continental divide on our discount code approaches?
Cara Marin • 22:57.280
A bit, yeah. So we we have we have discount codes globally. I don't remember the exact breakdown, honestly, off the top of my head, but one of the most interesting findings uh was that student discount codes are used often in the US, but quite a bit more often in Europe. Um and so that will be like upco uploading unique discount codes to sites like student beans. Um we we include in student discounts also employee discounts and friends and family discounts. And so that was one of the biggest things where by region It's offered everywhere, but it's more popular in Europe than in the US.
Kurt Elster • 23:31.480
Okay. That surprises me, but good thing to keep in mind. I love My experience with this really is is military discount. And typically I use an app called GovX, but there's other ways to do this. Um for it it verifies You know, that you have like some government ID and then offers you a discount and they've got options for like first responders and now that they have one for teachers. I wonder if it'll do students. But it all right, so you mentioned students um thoughts on have you you got any info on the military discounts?
Cara Marin • 24:03.120
So that was also grouped in with the the students. It's kind of like an insider discount. is a way to call it. So overall that category, I can bring up what it was, but it was the m it was more popular in Europe than in the US. Um still pretty popular. It may have been like number four or something in the US, if I'm remembering correctly. Um Uh pretty interesting. Yeah, why why do you love military discount codes?
Kurt Elster • 24:25.860
You know, I think it's just my experience is like that's where we started with it was hey, we want to offer military discount to our customers. And so like this was years ago, pre-pandemic. figure it out, do it, and then just started consistently adding that into sites. It's like, hey, you know, you're selling co we do a lot of car parts. Hey, you're selling car parts, you know, you should really sell uh you should offer a military discount for folks. Um, because that that audience responds to it. And it turns out it's like, well, guess what? You know, people in the military, that's a big employer. They buy from everywhere, right? They're not unique. They're they're regular Americans. It's a having that discount out there, like they know to look for it. It's powerful.
Cara Marin • 25:04.340
Very cool. Yeah, and I think I think it's a great way to just like build goodwill for your brand, right? If you're absolutely giving discount codes for military, first responders, teachers that um that will make people who don't fall in those categories. feeling more positively towards your brand.
Kurt Elster • 25:21.020
So you know, and you'll get like even if you don't offer it, you're you're gonna get emails from customers like, hey, you know, my favorite is the people who are like, it's something adjacent. And they're like, well can I also get the discount? You know, and of course it's up to the brand what they want to do with that. Um, you know, we worked on a car, a site that sold uh loud muffler, loud exhaust mufflers for cars. And there's a guy who would email and he would be like, I'm a pastor. And he he really needed a discount for his Mustang exhaust. I want you to spell out for me, you know, that unique discount code problem again, and versus like why I always want to be running, go through the hassle, you know, it's extra work of generating hundreds of one-time use codes versus I have a single code that's like ten off save ten welcome twenty
Cara Marin • 26:09.800
Yep. So the so the m benefit that people talk about most often is leaking to coupon sharing sites, where if anyone doesn't have familiarity with sites like Honey, basically you'll have a customer who is Checking out at full price with your brand, ready to pay full price, and then they have this browser. They're gonna buy anyway. Yeah, they're buying. They are definitely making the purchase. And then They have this browser extension installed and it just runs through all of the leak coupon codes that it could find. And if it finds something that matches, uh then They apply that coupon code and they get to make the purchase at a lower price than they were ready to.
Kurt Elster • 26:48.140
So for brands, yeah, yeah.
Cara Marin • 26:50.460
So that's just like a straight loss of revenue, right? There's no there's no denying that Um, and then on top of it, it does mess with your attribution because it seems like they came through because of a campaign with that discount code, but actually they were just buying. Um, so that's the thing people talk about the most, this like just preventing that trait loss of revenue from leak coupon codes. The reason why I love my job is not because of that, but because unique discount codes let you experiment with targeted offers. So if you're thinking about 15% off versus gift width purchase, you don't need to just make guesses, you can actually give different offers to different segments and then unlock something that for your brand does really well. And when you do that, you get to have better margins, make more money, which is great. And it's also just so much fun if you kind of find exactly what works for your brand. And we're talking about patterns from right 160, 2,000 discount code sets, but every brand is different. And when you run those experiments yourself, based off of these ideas and whatever else, um, you could find what really works and that's that's super cool.
Kurt Elster • 27:52.980
Absolutely. And what yeah, well an administrative note I want to make it In the the Shopify discount view, it'll show you how many times a code was used. And you know, if it has a limit on it, you know, like one time, you know, it'll show it like zero of one, one of one. And when you generate one-time use codes, I think folks may be thinking this makes a mess because you have like just a l a one line item in that discount view for every single one. But when they're generated, you know, in bulk by an app like Seguno, you know, or Clavio or whatever, it will group them into a set. And so it does not create a the administrative clutter that one might think it does. You know, you could see like, okay, yeah, these are unique one-time u coupon codes per person. but I generated them all in one go as one set for a particular campaign. And then I it like shows that all grouped, right?
Cara Marin • 28:44.840
Yes, exactly. Exactly. And and from there then you can go in like Shopify's native reporting, the sales by discount codes report. And you could see for that discount all sorts of analytics on how it's performing. We have some in our app specifically, we have some reporting that you could see beyond redemptions. Um, but it's really nice having that discount data in Shopify to have reporting from the app and also reporting that's native in Shopify so you can you can feel like you're in control. You know what's you know what's going on. Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 29:12.140
For sure. Ever had a customer cancel an order because they were shopping? Well hi, or because they broke up with their significant other. Those are real reasons customers could cancel, and they're a real headache for both you and your customers. Why should they have to email support to change, cancel, or update an order? Enter Cleverific. With Cleverific, your customers can edit their orders themselves through a self-service portal. That means fewer support tickets, faster shipping, and fewer returns. Everybody wins. Peter Manning, New York cut their order support by 99% with Cleverific. Now it's your turn. Listeners of the unofficial Shopify Podcast. Get 50% off the pro plan. Just $49 a month. Go to Cleverific. com slash unofficial and use promo code Kurt50 at checkout. It's less hassle, happier customers with Cleverific. So this is uh our discount info is like year round. This is like all discounts issued over all time. Uh is there differences in seasonality here? There's gotta be.
Cara Marin • 30:17.700
Yes. Well what one thing on seasons is actually the most popular discount of all, even more popular than Marking Life Cycle or affiliate is seasonal promotions. where we excluded Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Uh so seasonal promotions excluding biggest holiday of the year is the most popular use case. And often when people think of promotions, they're thinking only of, right, the biggest holidays, but actually there's fall sale, right, October sale, whatever Just based on the season, there's Mother's Day and Father's Day and all the holidays, right? Where you may want to do uh special offers, and that is the most popular. Um, yeah, something we do see actually is that for Black Friday sales, people often opt not to even use unique discount codes because they're just like our customers know that we are just flashing. We are going hard on so they just let those be really splashy and make sure that they have really strict expiration dates on them.
Kurt Elster • 31:13.180
Yeah. Do like uh sounds like uh either site-wide where you know we mark the You know, I could use a launch pad, I can use my ERP, I could use a spreadsheet. We're just gonna mark everything down with strike through prices and then change it back later. Or I could do it with automatic discount. I suppose, and just do like order discount, you know, X off the whole thing. Um, 'cause it's a site wide sale, it's different. You know, I wanna be able to show that uh that comparat price and show like this is what you are saving here by buying now and not later.
Cara Marin • 31:43.480
The only exception to that I would say is I'm sure you've already started to see Black Friday sales happening now, before Black Friday. And especially if you're like a VIP of a brand. then they may use a unique discount code to kind of say like early Black Friday. And that's that's a way to segment and really reward your best customers is getting early access to a big sale.
Kurt Elster • 32:07.480
the oh I love those those early Black Friday like VIP sales. You know, I have like any big purchase, I defer it until I'm like, I'm just waiting because I I know whether or not it's on sale on Black Friday, if I buy it then I am at least confident that that was the lowest price. It was gonna be, you know, the plus or minus twelve months, most likely. And so I ended up uh this start of this month, pulled the trigger on a 3D printer that I had been eyeing since January. Um and it was like another small item I bought. But it was because of those those early Black Friday sales. Um, you know, just gives you that that confidence and like this is the best price. So I you know on those sales, the other big distinction in discounts is especially in offers like percent off versus dollar off. And the advice that I have heard, the advice that I have been giving is that you'll get a better, at least when it comes to pop-up forms, you're gonna have a better opt-in rate with dollar off versus percent off. Because we're we're bad at math. Like doing a percentage calculation in my head, I'm gonna mess it up. But a dollar, that I could figure out. Like, oh, five bucks off twenty-five? Uh that's you know, twenty.
Cara Marin • 33:14.820
We've seen in the in the report it's pretty much exactly even what people choose to offer between percent off and dollar amount off. I'd be curious, we haven't analyzed it further in this way, but based on the average order value. I don't know how that may impact it. Cause you can also say you're bad at math and now you're perceiving 10% as being more than it is.
Kurt Elster • 33:35.900
Oh.
Cara Marin • 33:36.380
So who knows? Yeah. I I think something interesting in this data set is I don't have exact results of like this converted better, but I do have this is more popular by brands who are tracking the conversion rate. Uh and tracking the performance. So they're they're running many sales like this when they see the results. So those are about split 50-50.
Kurt Elster • 33:58.480
I'm curious curious how we can bring it down further.
Cara Marin • 34:00.960
Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 34:01.520
Yeah. It would need yeah, 'cause you don't know like the take rate on it. No. So but yeah, well, an interesting thing to test. Okay.
Cara Marin • 34:10.000
And the next report, maybe. Yeah.
Kurt Elster • 34:13.000
The way we have talked about this, someone would have some level of experience with discounting to be able to apply this to their store. And so if, you know, I've got my Shopify store, I'm in year two, and I really have limited experience with discounting, promos, automation. But like now I'm ready, right? I've got year two, I've I've got my audience. The the engine's running, things are moving. Where do I start with discounting? What's like the offer I should be playing with?
Cara Marin • 34:42.520
So I would say the first thing is take your welcome offer, probably a 20% off, and use unique discount codes for it. And what that lets you do is that makes sure that your customers, prospective customers are actually giving you their contact information in exchange for getting the discount uh so that you can nurture them if they don't purchase right away and also nurture them when they do purchase, right? Uh so that's a great one to start with. Um, the second two most popular in the marketing lifecycle that I think are really quick to set up would be post-purchase and win back. So post-purchase is you made a purchase X days ago. We think you're likely to purchase again. This could be seven days later, 30 days later. I see commonly uh also having an automation set up for one year later um where you want to encourage purchasing again. And that's just based on How often do people buy what you're selling? Right. Is it is it something that they need new every week or is it every year? And make sure you have the automation set up for that timeline. And then win back is customers who bought in the past, haven't bought in a long time, and you want to give them that special offer. to come back. So I definitely start with those three. And I'd say uh if you're just getting started, you may not have the historical data, but that's probably where this report could be the most helpful. Because the big brands, they're just going off of their own historical data because they know what works for their brand. But as a smaller brand, you're not gonna have 10 years of historical data. And so look at the trends in the industry and set up those marketing lifecycle codes.
Kurt Elster • 36:10.220
It's good advice. And all right, same question, but the experienced brands. You know, I'm like on Shopify Plus, you you get to demand one thing of them. What is it?
Cara Marin • 36:21.160
So I think the gift with purchase, you can do that ding again, uh is a good one. Good one to look at. Um, because that's uh yeah, there's definitely an opportunity for brands to use that even more. Um and then the card abandonment and browse abandonment are used less often than you'd think. And then one more that we see pretty commonly with big brands, but not as common as you'd expect is customer service codes. So if you imagine a customer uh has a poor experience with your brand, you now want to give them a personalized discount saying, I see you, I see we messed up. Let me make this right by offering you a discount. You usually will have different codes, like different amounts off based on how bad the experience was. Uh and what you get to do is in that case where you have someone writing into support, really angry, a lot of passion, you turn that passion into something positive. Uh so that's a a great one for bigger brands.
Kurt Elster • 37:14.020
Excellent. Good advice. And what's the biggest mistake you see people make?
Cara Marin • 37:18.900
You see the benefits of discounting and you start discounting with blanket discounts. Like there's no tomorrow. And then it is tomorrow. And now you can't sell things at the price you want to sell them. Uh so I would say discounts are such a powerful tool. Don't be afraid to discount and discount all the time, but use unique discount codes so that you still have that premium brand perception. Um and that lets you get the revenue today, but also not mess with your future revenue tomorrow. So that's the biggest thing. And and I see brands come back from it, but it takes some time. So that's a that's a challenge.
Kurt Elster • 37:55.440
All right, it's November. Have has there is any offer worked on you? What was like the last the last discount code you used?
Cara Marin • 38:04.660
My favorite one, again, a gift with purchase is uh a pair of leggings that I got. And so and leggings are pretty expens I think I was buying a sweatshirt. Uh and then they were like, oh, take these leggings. And that's like a pretty leggings and sweatshirt are similar value to me. Um, but they obviously had some excess or super soft. Happy with it. Yeah
Kurt Elster • 38:27.300
The okay. So your Christmas lights.
Cara Marin • 38:30.740
That is a good one.
Kurt Elster • 38:31.860
The Christmas lights, yeah. And like it wasn't even that amazing in an offer. You know, it was fifteen percent off. Yeah. Um but I was like, look, I'm I'm making this purchase no matter what. And they know that. They know they just need to be top of mind and better than, you know, what's my alternative? I drive to Home Depot and buy them or like my big box store. And so they just had to give me enough. to make me want to wait to get the lights, you know, a week later. It's totally fine. Anyway, I'll I'll do another episode on my Christmas light strategy. That one's for the dads. The tell me, you know, you study these hundred and sixty some thousand discount codes. You've got this in a report. Tell me about it. Where do I get it?
Cara Marin • 39:09.200
Uh so it's on our website. We can probably put the link at Seguno. com slash I think unique discount codes, benchmarks, something like that. Yeah. Um and yeah, from there you can just see the full breakdown by region, by industry, especially for smaller brands that want to see that industry breakdown for your specific industry, I'd recommend checking it out.
Kurt Elster • 39:31.060
Absolutely. All right, yeah, I just grabbed it. I will put that that link in the show notes, uh, as well as a link to Seguno Bulk Discount CodeBot, a tool I've I've used. you know, for many years and you know, our our newly released and made public promo pro uh yeah and well you know what as long we mentioned postpilot we should include that uh that team as well. This was great. I was like, all right, an episode about discount codes. How exciting could that be? I had a ton of fun. I enjoyed it. I learned a lot. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Cara Marin • 40:05.480
Awesome. Thanks, Kurt.
Kurt Elster • 40:09.760
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