Thursday, June 4, 2009

Craft Show Tips....Part 2 The Coupon Code

Sales are great right? Everytime you see that transaction notice in your email from Etsy it always gives you a little Zing right?! So not that you are making regular sales, it's time to start figuring out WHERE they are coming from. I do ALOT of promoting in order for people to notice my shop. I like to know what kind of promoting is successful and what is not working for me! I use codes, combined with discounts to get to that point!


Here is a look at the back of some leftover business cards from this past weekends show. The show was put on by the Caribou Coffee Company, so I used the code CARIBOUSHIP (because my code was for free shipping). hen I come up with a code AND I am posting it somewhere (On my blog I usually say BlogWhatever or what not) I ALWAYS make sure to either write it down or enter it straight away into my Code book and Excel File. That way when someone redeems it, I can mark it off and double check what the code was for.
When a customer in turn uses your code, they will write it in the messages to seller box. Here, my customer would use CARIBOUSHIP if they had my business card from the show. Then they would check out as normal. As Etsy DOES NOT have any service for coupons or discounts, my customers WAIT for the revised invouice that I will send them from PAYPAL. All this must be done manually until Etsy incorporates a promo code system. After 1 week, my Caribou Promo has brought me 1 sale, so I knew that out of the 20 cards that people took at the show, 1 person bought something straight away. (I also use expiration dates on codes, so that people will be more apt to use it right away as opposed to forgetting about it).


Whenever you have a sale, mention your shop, want to give a discount, run an Ad, you should use a seperate code so that you can keep track of what it working for you in the long run! When I ran a Facebook ad, I used FB3 (since expired) in the ad, because I was keeping an eye on what sales an ad in such a big place would bring. (Not many). Before Flickr started cracking down on profiles and Etsy peeps, I had a code in there for a free pair of earrings that said FlickEar (since expired) and I realized that a HUGE amount of my sales were coming from Flickr! It's not hard to keep a little notebook by your computer or even a file ON your computer of codes to keep track! Hope this has helped you all!!!

2 comments:

Authoritaters said...

That was very detailed indeed! Thanks Michelle! I gotta get better at Excel XD It must be so nice handling every personal sale on your own.

GUGAW said...

nice idea! do you use google analytics to see how people are getting to your shop?

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