Comments on: Coupon Manager Gets an Upgrade and Introduces Single-Use Coupons

By: Jennifer Farwell

Jennifer Farwell — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:03:55 +0000

Hi Fred,
There isn’t a requirement to have a 6-month minimum expiration for single-use coupons. You can set single-use coupons to expire tomorrow if you wish, using Coupon Manager. To do this, when creating a single-use coupon series in Coupon Manager, select “Valid through” for the Expiration option, then change the date to any date you wish that occurs within the next 6 months. This date could be tomorrow, could be next week, could be next month, just as long as it is within 6 months of the current date. I just went in to Coupon Manager and created a single-use coupon series set to expire tomorrow, to make sure this is still working as expected. As the help text in Coupon Manager calls out, the maximum length of time you can initially set a single-use coupon series to be valid for is 6 months from the current date, but as that date approaches, if you wish to extend the length of time coupons belonging to the single-use coupon series are valid for, simply modify the date to another date that occurs within 6 months of the date you are setting the new date on. Hope this helps.
- Jennifer

By: Fred

Fred — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 19:49:56 +0000

Can someone tell me the logic behind the REQUIREMENT to have a 6 month expiration date on single instance coupons? If I want to promote urgency on an offer and cant expire it soon (for example – much less then 6 months) do I have to delete the coupons to accomplish this?

Why cant I enter my own expiration date under 6 months or over a year?

By: ronpereira

ronpereira — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:26:04 +0000

Hey guys, I just posted a tutorial on how to use single use coupons in email marketing. It includes how to create the segments and then use "mail merge". You can check it out at blog.topright.com.

By: jfarwell

jfarwell — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:08:53 +0000

McKane,

The scenario you described seems like a great use of single-use coupons. While the 6-month initial lifespan of these coupons may seem like a limitation, here are a couple of things to consider: You may be better off refreshing your database with a new coupon series every so often – it keeps the expiration dates short which gives buyers more motivation to redeem them. Also, it allows you to try out different types of offers as separate series to see how they perform.

That said, if you find there’s a series that is performing really well and you want to keep going with it for longer than 6 months, note that you can extend the life of a series later – up to one year from the series creation date. (See: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/promote/tools/tools-83.html) Just remember that the expiration will be extended for all coupons instances in that series.

By: jfarwell

jfarwell — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:05:07 +0000

Beth,

If you’d like to send out single-use coupons via email, you can do a mail merge if that functionality is available in the email program you use, or you can use an email service (like Campaigner). When you create your spreadsheet of email addresses to send to, include a column with all of the coupon codes in it as well so that there is a unique single-use code associated with each email address. You might, for example, have 3 columns: email address, first name, coupon code. When you create the outgoing email, just specify where in the email you want each type of info to appear so that each email goes out with its unique information inserted.

By: jfarwell

jfarwell — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:03:03 +0000

Allan,

If you offer products that range in weight as greatly as feathers and anvils, it’s true that free shipping coupons can be risky when they are open to all products. You may find that there are cases where a single-use coupon for free shipping will work for you though (even without inclusion/exclusion capability), like customer service coupons or targeted campaigns using your least expensive shipping method.

While free shipping is often a really compelling offer, it’s not the only type of offer that can drive sales. We hope that you will explore using the new features – if not for free shipping coupons, then for percent or dollar off coupons.

By: mckane

mckane — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:24:32 +0000

Why the arbitrary 6 month limit on single use coupon codes? Doesn’t this kind of defeat the purpose of them? If you want to create a bunch and put them into a database and then use them up over time, you can’t. They expire too soon.
Please lift the arbitrary date deadline. It makes the feature almost unusable for our purposes. We were excited about the new feature until we realized this limit was in.

By: Beth

Beth — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:37:45 +0000

I would like to see free shipping for items used.

Also, if I use a single use coupon, how do I get the coupon codes individually onto an email list?

By: allan

allan — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:32:27 +0000

We are really disappointed that you cant offer free shipping on a specific item. Once again, another new feature we cant use. Common yahoo – wake up!