"Live Offers" real-time email couponing

ExactTarget have launched a new couponing platform that enables marketers to offer on-the-fly discounts and promotions while tracking open rates, print rates, redemption and ROI.

by Helen Leggatt

“Live Offers” from ExactTarget enables marketers to better target coupons distributed by email, recorded voice, SMS or landing pages. In particular, “Live Offers” allows marketers to render live coupon-based offers at the time of opening and not just at dispatch.

What does that mean for marketers? It allows more control over coupon and promotion-based campaigns such as controlling redemption figures and offer management. For example, a marketer can distribute a coupon-based offer to 5,000 targeted customers but limit the uptake of coupons to the first 1,000 opened. Likewise, marketers can develop a tiered campaign giving different offers at different email opening times and varying the offer based on the number of coupons opened, printed or redeemed throughout the lifetime of the that campaign.

In an interview with Ecommerce-Guide.com, Scott Roth, director of product marketing for ExactTarget, explained, "This tracking is only possible because every single e-mail that is distributed with a coupon is tied to a specific individual on your list, and stays tied to the individual, whether he or she redeems a coupon online, in-store or doesn't redeem it at all.”

“From a retailers' perspective, it really is a great thing to be able to prove back the ROI that campaign initiated, and the retailer has a database of subscribers and knows precisely who acted on that offer or not, and they can now go back and market to those subscribers according to what they did with the coupon.”