How to distribute unique codes for restaurants, physical stores, and events
Coupon Carrier is a service that helps you distribute unique codes and coupons to your customers. You can choose to import your own set of unique codes, generate new random codes, or automatically create discount codes in supported e-commerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe, etc).
In this article, we'll talk about common solutions for a few different types of businesses:
Restaurants
Many of our restaurant users want to offer their customers a on-time coupon that they can exchange for something when they visit their location. Using Coupon Carrier, you can create a unique link that you insert into the email you send to your customers. When clicked, it'll take them to a customizable landing page with the offer. This page includes a button that, when tapped, will mark the offer as used.
Here's how the process works:
- You send an email to your customer that includes a unique link to their offer.
- When the customer visits your location, they can open their email and click the link to show their digital coupon.
- Once the offer has been accepted, the customer can be asked to tap the button to mark the offer as used.
The Mark-as-used button is available on our Redeem Link landing page. Start by creating a Redeem Link configuration. Here is a summary of the steps to get started:
- Create a new Redeem Link configuration
Connect to the service that you'll use the link in, or choose Generic Link if your service isn't supported. Read more about how the redeem link works in our Getting Started Guide.
Select the predefined "Mark-as-used" template to get started. You can always change the settings of the page to customize it to your needs.
In the next section, Code Source, select the recommended option "Use Random Codes". This will create a new autogenerated code list that will generate new random codes for each recipient. In this case, the recipient will not see the code, but they still receive a unique code so that it can be delivered and marked as used.
Save your changes and activate the configuration to perform your initial tests. Reach out to us if you need any help getting started.
Physical stores (Brick-and-mortar)
For physical stores, it's common to have a Point-of-Sales (POS) system. Some of these systems allow you to generate lists of discount codes that can be manually entered or scanned as QR codes when a customer brings them into the store.
If you are able to generate discount codes in your POS, you can start by generating a large list of unique coupons in your POS admin, and this is where you'll also specify the value of the discount. Export these codes and import them into a Coupon Carrier code list, as shown here.
In cases where you can't generate your own set of codes, we can generate random codes for you. You can then use our scanner service for mobile devices to scan these codes on location or use our mark-as-used button that, when pressed, will mark the offer as used.
You can either use our Code Email (when Coupon Carrier sends the email) or Redeem Link to distribute your unique codes to your subscribers. Both of these features support showing the code as a QR code.
In-person events
For events where you might not have a POS system to scan codes, you might want to use our scanner service and QR code features. Both our Code Email (when Coupon Carrier sends the email) and Redeem Link features have support for QR codes, and you can use our built-in code generator to automatically create QR codes for your recipients.
On location, you can then use our mobile scanner service to scan the codes. Read more about how to use our scanner service →