By the way, if you see a company doing something over and over again, even if you thinks it's dumb or ineffective, it probably is generating more sales than it costs. This isn't 100% certain, but it's over 90%.

In the online world there are numerous ways to use coupons:

• When a person visits your site, give them a coupon for 10% off their purchase.
• Same as above but for 2 days, or 5, or 10.
• When a person visits another site, let the other site give your potential customer a coupon for a discount on your site. It will increase the likelihood that they will visit your site. Make a reciprocal arrangement so you give coupons to the other site.
• Give out printed coupons at a convention or other gathering
• Put a coupon in your newsletter

The possibilities are boundless, limited only by your imagination.

When you give out coupons, you want to do two things.

1. Put a code on the coupon so you can track where it came from, because if you're getting a lot of traffic from a place, you want to put more emphasis on marketing through that place.
2. Put a check code as part of the coupon code, especially if there's an expiration date on the coupon so they can't just change the date and take advantage of the coupon.

There are quite a number of Coupon Types, e.g. fixed dollar discount, percentage discount, percentage off till October 31, percentage off for the next 3 days, and so on. If you want to see the complete list, click here. If you have an idea for one that not on the list, please let us know - suggestions@eComPal.com. Coupon types are set by the system, because we have to make calculations based on the type of coupon.

Campaigns are what we call the record you set up to identify a particular coupon. Let's say you're going to give a 10% discount to visitors on your web site if they purchase during October 2002. 

You set up a campaign, give it a Identifier, Name or description, set the type of campaign from a list, set the discount and how to calculate it (Percentage or discount amount), and give it an expiration.  Actually, there are four possible discounts available. Percentage or flat amount as mentioned above, and free shipping and, what we call, a free goodie. A free goodie is like a free report, or a free key chain, or any non cash calculation item.

eComPal will automatically create the coupon code for you to present to your customers. You can put it on a special entry page, use it as part of an Email newsletter, have it printed in a newspaper ad, plaster it on a bill board. Use it anywhere you think it will drive traffic to your site.

Once you've created a campaign and you'll get a Coupon Code to to add to the places you're going to present it to your visitors. The resulting code will look like xTccccYMM. x is a system generated code to verify the coupon when it's entered into the system by your customer. T is the Coupon Type. cccc is the campaign code, either 2 characters (cc) or 4 characters (cccc), that's used to track your responses to the coupon offer. Y is the last digit of the year, in this case 2, and MM is the month, 10. By the way, when the expiration is a month, it expires on the last day of the month.

The resulting Coupon Code might look like 33ABCD210.

When your customer orders from your site she'll be able to enter this coupon code on the eComPal order page. If this is a 10% discount coupon, for example, the shopping cart will deduct 10% from the order, after it's validated the coupon.

By the way, if you want to add more tracking to the coupon, let's say to a sales person or a group that distribution them, you can add as many characters as you wish to the end if the coupon code. The shopping cart will only check the system generated characters, nothing beyond. One suggestion, don't make any additional characters longer than necessary because it makes it more difficult for your customer to type it in correctly.

If you generate coupons "on the fly", like someone is leaving your site so you give them a 10% off coupon if they purchase in the next 2 days, you can download the code that generates the x in the Coupon Code.

The process may seem a little confusing at first because it's so flexible. After you set up a campaign or two you'll get the hang of it. 

Here's how you create a new campaign.

When you first open the Campaign screen it will be empty. Start by clicking the "New" button to add your first campaign.

The New Campaign screen will pop up.

Campaign Id is the code you assign to identify the campaign.

Give it an Id, like AA, or AAAA for tracking purposes. The Id is also the "Tracking Code". It can be letters and numbers. You can use a two letter code or a four letter Id, its your choice. Note that the letters will always be set to upper case. That's so your customers can enter either upper or lower and we'll recognize it. You want to make it as easy and un-confusing as possible for your customer.

Description is your description of your campaign so you can remember what the campaign is when you're looking at it in the future. 

Coupon Type is a list of predefined types. Select the appropriate type from the list. the coupon type tells eComPal how to calculate the check digit so the coupon can be verified. 

Discount rate is the percentage rate or discount amount that the customer gets with this coupon. If the coupon is for free shipping or a free goodie don't enter anything in the discount rate field.

Fixed Calc is to be checked if the discount is a fixed amount.

Percentage Calc is to be checked if the discount is a percentage off the order.

Free Shipping is to be checked if the discount is free shipping for the order.

Free Goodie is to be checked of the discount is a free goodie.

Year digit is the one digit year the coupon expires, like 3 for 2003.

Month digits is for the two digit month the coupon expires, like 04 for April. This is also the month the coupon starts in the case of coupons that are good for a several days from the date issued.

Day Digits is the day of the month the coupon expires, or the day the coupon starts in the case of coupons that are good for a number of days from the date issued.

Duration is used if your coupon is decreasing in value over a period of days. For example, the duration is three days and the discount is 15%. Your customer will get a 15% discount the first day, a 10% discount the second day and a 5% discount the third day. After the third day there's no discount. It works exactly the same way for fixed amount discounts. 

Coupon Code is not an entry field. This displays the coupon code, including check digit that is calculated for the coupon.

Click here to go to the Campaign Screen.

Discounts

If you give quantity discounts, you can set it up very easily. As an example if someone buys 10 items you might give them 10% of, if they buy 20, 15% off and so on.

Discounts are set up not only to give a discount for the quantity purchased, but also by the type of product. Let's say that you sell silver and gold jewelry. If someone buys 10 gold items you give them 10% off. If they but 10 silver items, you give them 8% off. We call these your discount schedule. In this example, gold might be schedule GL and silver schedule SL. You can have up to 500 schedules if you need.

The discount schedule is part of the code that you send to the shopping cart identifying what your customer purchased. It's called "schedule". So you would include &schedule=GL to your link to eComPal to give your user a quantity discount.

You can have as many discount levels in each schedule as you want. It would look something like this;

Setting up your discount schedules

When you open the discount schedule screen the first time it will be empty except for a couple of buttons. Click the "New" button to start a new schedule.

Schedule is the identifier of the schedule you want to create or add to. It's two letters and numbers. The letters will always be converted to upper case so there's no confusion when checking for quantity discounts

Quantity is the quantity purchase at or over which the customer will receive a discount. For example, if the quantity is 10 and the customer purchase 10 or more of this item she will receive a discount, identified in the field that follows.

Discount is the percentage discount your customer will receive if she purchases equal to or greater than the quantity identified above.

That's it. Click the "Save" button and your done. You'll see a display of the schedule you've just created. You can build as many schedules with as many discount levels as you need to optimize your sales.

Click here to set up your discount schedules.