How Long Should I Run A Coupon Code Campaign For?

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CouponFollow has found that the average coupon code run time from start of campaign to expiration is 72 hours (3 days). Retailers want to give the purchaser time to act, but also give some sense of urgency.

Of 750,000 coupon codes from our data set, we analyzed for time period of one day, one week or one month. Here's the results:

• 78.5% one day expiration
• 17.3% one week expiration
• 4.2% one month expiration

Clearly retailers favor shorter time-period coupons, because consumers love flash sales and coupons, and it really gets incentives them to act.

We generally see a few different types of coupon code campaigns that are the most common:

• General coupon - usually lasts 2-4 days (often retailers will use something like SAVE15, where the number is tied to the value of the offer)
• Flash coupon - usually lasts 24 hours (this is a common tactic to drive a quick spike in volume of sales)
• Month long coupon - usually lasts the whole month (often retailers will use the month abbreviation eg. SEP25)
• Holiday coupon - usually starts a few days before the holiday and ends on or a day after the holiday (July 4th, Memorial Day, etc., usually the code will contain apprioriate language eg. MEM15, etc.)

A common practice for retailers is to reuse the same coupon code at different points of the year, or the same time each year.  An example is Macy's often reuses SUMMER each year, and also reuses code VIP periodically throughout the year.