If you’re using Stripe as your payment service provider for your subscription-based business, but have never used Stripe coupons, you’re probably missing out on a powerful weapon in your sales arsenal. It’s time to see why offering discount codes is a highly effective conversion tool, and how you can set up Stripe coupons in your online store!

Why should you use Stripe coupons?

Before jumping right to our step-by-step instructions on how to create Stripe coupons, let’s discuss first, why a sound coupon marketing strategy is critical for growing your business.

Increased conversions

Well, first of all, did you know that over 90% of consumers are using vouchers and discount coupons when shopping?

Yep, that’s true: people don’t even shy away from spending 2 hours a week dedicated to hunting for deals online!

Therefore, it’s not a surprising fact that discounts can dramatically increase conversions: 65% of consumers admit discount codes often finalize their purchase decisions.

Improved brand awareness

Statistics also show that consumers will break routine shopping patterns to benefit from an attractive coupon offer. This way, Stripe coupons and promotion codes can introduce new customers to your online store. First-time shopper offers, referral promo codes, or exclusive social offers can help raise brand awareness and attract new shoppers at quite a reasonable cost.

Strong customer loyalty

Coupons can also create loyalty with existing customers by encouraging them to return: 91% of coupon redeemers say they’ll revisit a store after being offered a coupon.

Increased sales

Coupons can convince shoppers to buy more items than they normally would. Buy-one-get-one deals, free shipping, or minimum purchase discounts act as effective motivators to encourage purchases. Stripe coupons can also be used to strategically encourage customers to buy more profitable products or services with the goal of boosting profit margin.

Furthermore, Stripe coupons can help introduce new product lines or sell excess inventory to make room for newer products.

Measurable results

Finally, you shouldn’t forget the fact that couponing is one of the most measurable forms of promotion! You can simply count the number of coupons redeemed to judge the effectiveness of your campaigns. Make sure to use the results as some sort of consumer feedback to guide you in improving your future offers!

How to create Stripe coupons?

Now that you’re familiar with all the advantages of offering discount codes for your customers, let’s see how you can create your first Stripe coupon!

If you’re using WP Full Pay as your Stripe payments plugin for your WordPress site, we’ve also included the relevant settings in the below guide.

Let’s get started!

1. First, go to the Dashboard, and open the Products page.
2. Click Coupons.

3. Next, click +New in the top right corner.

4. In the Create a coupon dialog, enter the coupon’s parameters. If you’re using the WP Full Pay plugin, make sure to use the same code in the “Name” and “ID” fields! This is important, as otherwise, WP Full Pay won’t be able to find the coupon when redeemed. Next, determine whether the coupon should discount a subscription by a fixed amount or by a percentage. (WP Full Pay supports both!) In the “Percentage off” field, indicate the value of the coupon. Furthermore, you can apply the coupon to specific products in the “Apply to specific product” field, set the duration of the discount in the “Duration” field, and limit the number of redemptions in the “Redemption limits” field.

5. Once you’ve set up all the coupon details, click Create coupon. And that’s it, you’ve created your first Stripe coupon!

6. Optionally, you can also create a promotion code for your coupon. Promotion codes are customer-facing codes on top of your Stripe coupons that you can share directly with your customers. Buyers can enter these codes at checkout to get a discount on their purchase. You can create a new promotion code by clicking the +Add a promotion code button on the “Coupon details” page:

7. Next, you can configure how the promotion code should work. In the “Code” field, enter a code that your customer can use at checkout to redeem the Stripe coupon. Next, configure the details of your promotion code. For instance, you can offer the code only to specific customers or you can add an expiration date. If you’re ready with configuring your promotion code, just click Add promotion code. And that’s it!

How to apply Stripe coupons to subscriptions

After you’ve created a Stripe coupon, you can create a discount by applying the coupon to a subscription:

1. Open the Dashboard, and go to the Payments page.
2. Here, click Subscriptions.
3. Select the relevant subscription, and click Actions.
4. Next, click Update subscription.
5. Click the Add coupon button.
6. Select a coupon from the menu.
7. Click Submit.

How to apply Stripe coupons to customers

You can also add your Stripe coupons to specific customers. In this case, the coupon will apply to all subscriptions for that specific customer, including subscriptions added later. Therefore, you should add Stripe coupons to customers only, if you want to discount all recurring charges for selected buyers.

To do so, follow these steps:

1. Open the Dashboard, and go to the Customers page.
2. Here, select the customer.
3. Click Actions.
4. Next, click Apply coupon.
5. Select a coupon from the drop-down menu.
6. Click Submit.

How to use Stripe coupons with WP Full Pay

The WordPress plugin WP Full Pay not only makes accepting payments a walk in the park, but it also enables you to use Stripe coupons and promotion codes in payment forms as well as subscription forms with ease!

Keep in mind that checkout forms only accept promotion codes. (These codes are case-insensitive.) Inline forms work both with Stripe coupons as well as promotion codes. Here, coupons are case-sensitive, and promotion codes are case-insensitive.

Furthermore, you can decide on a per-form basis if you want to show a coupon field in your form. You can enable it by turning on the “Show coupon field?” option on the “Form fields” tab of the form:

Additionally, a great feature of WP Full Pay is that if a coupon is applied to specific products and the inline form has a product selector, the form can inform your customers if their purchase is eligible for the discount code they’re trying to redeem.

This is what it looks like when a Stripe coupon is redeemed and applied to a supported product:

And this is what your form will display if your customers try to redeem a coupon that doesn’t apply to the selected product:

To show the redeemed Stripe coupons on thank you pages, email receipts, or transaction descriptions, you can use the %COUPON_CODE% placeholder token. If you’re using some more advanced customizations on your WordPress site, you can use the placeholder token in action hooks as well.

To check if a coupon has been redeemed, all you have to do is navigate to the “Transaction details” side page of the given transaction in WP Full Pay (on the WordPress admin dashboard):

Wrap-up

Offering discounts to your customers should be a key part of your marketing strategy to improve conversions, increase sales, reward customers for loyalty, and build brand awareness. The above step-by-step guide helps you create Stripe coupons for your subscription-based business with ease!