You don’t necessarily need statistics to understand how effective coupons and deals are -- more than a quarter of all eBay coupon redemptions typically come from our partners.

 

From deals sites to major media companies, here are the three smart ways our partners use eBay coupons to drive revenue:

 

Make it news your readers can use

CNN leveraged its Underscored channel -- an online shopping guide for the best in style, tech, health, and travel -- to drive sales with a 15% off sitewide flash coupon.

 

While the “hot off the presses” angle and a limited-time offer fuel excitement and urgency, there are other great reasons you can give shoppers to redeem a coupon:

  • Report why a particular deal is a great offer, whether it’s best-of-web or a rare discount for a particular brand in order to prompt click-through
  • Find out what items are worth to drive home your key points
  • Highlight the expiration date of the deal to urge shoppers to buy it now
  • Sprinkle in eBay benefits, such as our diverse inventory, top-rated sellers, Guaranteed Delivery, and Buy It Now.
  • Build a Smart Placements banner ad with keywords that match the items in the promotion to help your visitors visualize the deals. Turn on auto-optimization to make it even more relevant and show each individual user what he or she recently viewed on eBay.

 

Build a loyal base of buyers who keep coming back

Rakuten, formerly Ebates, incentivizes shoppers by providing competitive cash-back rates when they buy through Rakuten. For example, they recently promoted a 50% coupon and added 2% cash back to make each purchase even more compelling.

 

Take a page out of this successful loyalty site’s playbook and add extra incentives to make your audience excited to buy through your site, whether by giving them a cut of your commission, or a reward you can provide that costs less than your commission. Graphics can also help further sell your reward, as graphics get much higher views than text. You can also use Smart Share to quickly create links and share them on your social channels.

 

Use email blasts and push notifications for quick conversions

The app Shopkick takes advantage of being at their users’ fingertips and shares eBay coupons directly to their phones, like this one for a 15% off sitewide flash coupon:

 

 

As Shopkick demonstrates, push notifications not only capture users’ attention, but when they contain a limited time, irresistible deal, they pull in purchases.  To do this for your business, you should:

  • Use push notifications to convey a sense of urgency, pairing them with deadline-driven copy to close sales quicker.
  • Reach your audience where they are.  One of our partners drove an extra $200K by promoting a coupon solely on Twitter.
  • Lead with discount details. Whether it’s an email subject line, social post, push notification or any other format, you should keep it clear, concise and easy to access for quick conversion.

To stay on top of the most recent deals, including trending offers, be sure to visit the eBay deals pages.