FastSpring Introduces Multi-Discount Coupon Codes
Recently, FastSpring announced what they call “Multi-Discount Coupons”. These are coupon codes that:
- can be used multiple times (e.g.
CYBERMONDAY
, to be used by any customer, as opposed to one-time use coupons) - can apply different discounts for multiple products.
This is different from regular coupon codes that would only apply to one product.
To implement a coupon-based discount for a combination of products, the best bet so far was to create a (temporary) product bundle and apply a re-usable coupon to that.
I’m glad to see FastSpring is still expanding the features of the new backend. It’s catching up to the decades old backend, and this is, I believe, even exceeding that one’s features.
In the old backend, you were able to do many more discount-based offerings that were commonplace. When the new backend was introduced, I lamented that the established patterns of offering discounts weren’t possible. We exclusively had one-time use coupons. So you couldn’t run a sale with a CYBERMONDAY
coupon that anyone could use an infinite number of times (you had to generate unique codes like CYMON01A45
). And you couldn’t give leads from a sponsored blog posting a discount as an incentive to purchase. (I am not implying that this is a good or bad idea. Just that it wasn’t possible, while being a very common practice; “Use coupon CTIETZE2021 for 20% off!”)
The best thing you had was to apply referral-based discounts, or, worse, create a discounted, hidden copy of your product and link folks to that. Meh.
So things are improving for sellers, that’s good.