Coupons overview

Coupons lets you text offers to customers who agreed to hear from you, and see who came in to use them. You make an offer once, then send it to a group one time, or hang it on a ladder that texts people on its own when something happens, like a first visit or a review.

Coupons is an add-on to your plan. Available on Professional and Enterprise. Starter accounts can upgrade to add it.

Where everything isCopy Anchor Link

Open Coupons in the sidebar. It has six tabs:

• Overview: what needs you, your live offers and ladders, today at the counter and the next sends, with Send an offer at the top.
• Offers: the things you give away. See Offers.
• Ladders: texts that go out on their own. See Ladders and rungs.
• Audience: who you can text, your smart lists, your lists, and everyone in your directory.
• Results: what your offers earned, offer by offer, every redemption, and your margin.
• Settings: your texting setup, the automatic messages, the sending rules, your compliance record, defaults for new offers, staff and devices, and your sign-up card.

Your texting numberCopy Anchor Link

Before anyone can text on your behalf, the phone carriers check that your business is real. Coupons walks you through it: press Start texting setup and fill in five short steps, Your business, Where the business is, Who can vouch for the business, A few last details and What you will text, then Check it over. Everything you type is saved as you go, so you can leave and come back.

When every step is filled in, we file the registration with the carriers for you. Their check takes 10 to 15 days, there is nothing for you to do while it runs, and we email you either way. There is a one-time carrier fee, and we tell you the amount before anything is charged.

• While it is with the carriers, your texting setup shows exactly what we sent them.
• If they come back with something to fix, you are taken straight to the field they named.
• Once they approve, your number switches on.

You do not have to wait to get ready. You can build offers and ladders in the meantime (nothing sends until you turn a ladder on), and you can put your sign-up card on the counter: its QR code opens your sign-up page, which takes sign-ups before your number is live.

Your texting number belongs to a storefront, not to your account. Each storefront needs its own registration, its own 10 to 15 day wait and its own one-time carrier fee, so if you have more than one location, Coupons asks which storefront to start from and you add another when you want a second number.

Who you can textCopy Anchor Link

Coupons only texts people who agreed to hear from you. There are four ways onto your list:

1. Typing their own number into your Square register.
2. Texting JOIN to your number, from the card on your counter.
3. Signing up on your sign-up page.
4. Being added by hand or imported from a file by you. These are texted only if SMS permission was ticked for them, on your word that each person agreed to hear from you, so keep your own record of how you got each number. Without the tick, a number is kept and never texted.

Anyone can text STOP at any time, and it applies to your whole account straight away.

The Audience tab shows how many people you have and how many you can text today. Its People tab is your directory, where you add, import, edit and delete people; it is shared with Customer Outreach, so the same people show up there. Some numbers cannot be texted: people who opted out, numbers we cannot read, and numbers that stopped working, each with a page of its own under Audience.

Messages we send for youCopy Anchor Link

Three replies go out on their own, and Settings > Automatic messages shows each one:

• when someone joins, a confirmation, straight away;
• when someone texts STOP, a confirmation that they will get nothing more;
• when someone texts HELP, a reply telling them how to reach you.

The program name in these messages is the part you can change. The one switch on that page asks new sign-ups to reply Y before you text them anything, which turns joining into two steps instead of one.

The rules every text followsCopy Anchor Link

These rules apply to every text, and none of them is a setting. Settings > Sending rules lays most of them out.

• When. We only text between 9:00am and 8:00pm on your storefront's clock, and from noon on Sundays. That is not a setting. A text that is due outside those hours waits for the window to open; it is never dropped.
• How often. Each person can get up to 30 texts from you in any 30 days. You told the carriers that number when you registered, so it blocks the next text rather than warning you. When someone is at the limit, a one-time send to them is dropped first, then a ladder rung, then an expiry reminder; replies to sign-ups, STOP and HELP are never counted and always sent.
• What every text says. Every text starts with your business name and ends with the opt-out line. Both count toward its length. The texting rules explain the opt-out line, and the one way to leave it out.
• How much a day. We hold your account to 2,000 text segments a day. That is our own limit, set below what the carriers allow, and we cannot raise it for you today. Nothing is dropped: whatever does not fit goes out on its own the next morning.

Text segmentsCopy Anchor Link

Texts are counted in text segments. One segment holds up to 160 characters, or 70 if the text has an emoji or another special character in it. A longer text goes out as several segments, and every segment is charged.

Coupons shows your balance in text segments at the top of every screen. It is one balance for the whole account, and review requests spend from it too. When you run low, Top up segments takes you to your billing settings.

Redeeming at the counterCopy Anchor Link

Coupon codes are redeemed at your counter, on a phone or tablet you pair from Settings > Staff and devices. Nobody at the counter needs to log in: the device opens a link that can only redeem codes, and staff unlock it with a four-digit PIN that everyone at the counter shares. Change the PIN when somebody leaves, and revoke a device you no longer use. Until a device is paired, nothing at the counter records a redemption.

Every redemption is listed under Results > Every redemption.