5 Ways to Use Promotional Coupons in Your SaaS Company

Special Offers Boosts Revenue

Are you ready to use promotional coupons to market your SaaS company to a bigger audience of potential customers? If you’re looking to see your revenue reach even higher and want to see a bigger influx of customers who have a higher potential of becoming reoccurring, subscribed members of your service, then maybe it’s time to look into coupons.

Promotional coupons aren’t just for retailers and grocery stores, they can be a very viable avenue for a SaaS business looking to get more leads and profits. These aren’t your typical “free trial for one month” promotions, either. Instead, these are true promotions that any SaaS service can do and don’t have to worry about a high subscription churn rate or the potential of the entire plan failing completely.

The following are five great ways you can use promotional coupons right now.

1. Discounts for beta users

If you’re working on a new product and have been in beta mode with live users testing your software but feel that you are finally ready to release the final product and start offering packaged tiers of the service, one of the best promotional stunts you can pull is to give your loyal beta users a discount on the final product.

I signed up for a beta with a company and when they launched their product they sent me a discount of 78% off their regular price.  I signed up without any hesitation. (I liked their product too, which is very important)

Beta Offer for trying them out

2. Refer a friend affiliate program

Most SaaS businesses have an affiliate program, but most of them offer the same thing: a free trial. Instead, reward the affiliate marketers who are really advertising your product with a tiered system of rewards and discounts. Someone refers five of their friends? Start giving them a month free at that point, or even a heavily discounted rate on their next billing cycle. Make sure to monitor your affiliate program to make sure only the best quality referrals are coming in, too.

Here is a screenshot of “Refer a Friend” campaign by New Relic.

Refer a Friend campaign from New Relic

3. Social media activated promotions

These are becoming even more popular. A SaaS company can request that Twitter followers, Facebook followers, or even LinkedIn followers participate in an online chat or forum in order to receive a promotional coupon for their time. Or, a discounted rate can be rewarded as a contest gift after an event or chat.

WooBox provides you with the tools to launch social media promotions with one click. There are several other tools as well.  WooBox has a free version which you can use to try your ideas.

WooBox

4. Loyalty discounts

Have a customer who has been around for five years? How about an entire decade? Instead of giving them a congratulatory email, maybe it would be better to really show you care by giving out promotional coupons to loyal customers. Such good PR can mean they tell others about your business and their friends start using your service.

Here is a well-written article on How to Start a Customer Rewards Program featured in Inc.com.

5. Do seasonal promotional coupons

Seasonal promotions are another popular way for companies to see a surge in business. Starbucks does it every year with their Pumpkin Spice Latte, so doing seasonal promotional coupons only makes sense–even for a SaaS company. Get creative with your discounts every year, especially around the end of the year when many businesses and customers are looking for new services to work within the coming year.

Here is a great example of Liquid Accounts software using a season to provide promotional offers.

Seasonal Promotion of Liquid Accounts Ltd.

There you have it.  What other ideas do you have to use coupons or promotions in your SaaS business? Please use the comment box below to share your ideas.