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ReportAuthors: Meenu Laul, Scott Tucker
This article outlines the architectural overview of an end-to-end coupon solution.
Summary
Coupons are a form of marketing strategy that allows customers to get discounts or free products or services from certain sellers.
Retailers issue coupons for various reasons, such as attracting new customers, increasing sales, clearing out inventory, or promoting brand loyalty. Coupons help retailers compete with other businesses or online platforms that offer lower prices or more convenience. Coupons can be delivered to customers through different channels, such as physical mail, email, social media, or mobile apps.
Using multiple Dynamics 365 applications, all stages of the coupon lifecycle can be managed, however currently our applications do not deliver a complete solution without customization. Dynamics 365 Marketing, Commerce, and Customer Insights each cover some aspects of the coupon lifecycle. To enable a seamless experience throughout the coupon lifecycle we are recommending a coupon microservice to connect the applications together and improve the user experience when executing coupon-based marketing campaigns.
Solution
Solution is designed to be adaptable to various marketing and commerce software, ensuring its functionality across different platforms. You can see in the diagram below that the coupon microservice is used as a shared data service between the customer data platform (CDP), marketing application, and commerce application. The implementation of the coupon service API can vary depending on specific business requirements, but some core capabilities will be needed. Those core capabilities are
Depending on whether it is segment based or trigger-based flow steps will vary in above architecture:
Trigger based flow:
Segment based flow:
Conclusion
This solution design enables businesses to provide seamless experience to corporate users across multiple applications while also providing a personalized customer journey experience to their customers.
This article outlines the architectural overview of an end-to-end coupon solution.
Summary
Coupons are a form of marketing strategy that allows customers to get discounts or free products or services from certain sellers.
Retailers issue coupons for various reasons, such as attracting new customers, increasing sales, clearing out inventory, or promoting brand loyalty. Coupons help retailers compete with other businesses or online platforms that offer lower prices or more convenience. Coupons can be delivered to customers through different channels, such as physical mail, email, social media, or mobile apps.
Using multiple Dynamics 365 applications, all stages of the coupon lifecycle can be managed, however currently our applications do not deliver a complete solution without customization. Dynamics 365 Marketing, Commerce, and Customer Insights each cover some aspects of the coupon lifecycle. To enable a seamless experience throughout the coupon lifecycle we are recommending a coupon microservice to connect the applications together and improve the user experience when executing coupon-based marketing campaigns.
Solution
Solution is designed to be adaptable to various marketing and commerce software, ensuring its functionality across different platforms. You can see in the diagram below that the coupon microservice is used as a shared data service between the customer data platform (CDP), marketing application, and commerce application. The implementation of the coupon service API can vary depending on specific business requirements, but some core capabilities will be needed. Those core capabilities are
- Generate and store serialized coupon codes
- Associate the coupon codes with customers
- Associate the coupon codes with discounts
- Various ways to retrieve the coupon codes
- Validate a single coupon code
- Update the coupon code status when redeemed
Architecture
Depending on whether it is segment based or trigger-based flow steps will vary in above architecture:
Trigger based flow:
- Create pool of coupon/image/bar code in coupon service
- Date range, link to the discount, name
- Coupon service generates serialized coupon codes
- [optional] The coupon service sends the serialized coupon codes to POS or ERP system
- Create a trigger-based journey in CI-J
- Select the campaign coupon(s) from step 1
- In the journey designer, connect to the coupon services to select the personalized serialized coupon code.
- Execute the journey in CI-J
- Redeem coupon in store
- Validate the serialized coupon code (date, previous usage, context*)
- Coupon analytics in CI-D
- By customer coupon delivery and usage across multiple campaigns / journey
- Coupon delivery and usage within a single campaign / journey
Segment based flow:
- Create segments in CI-D
- Create a coupon/image/bar code in coupon service
- Date range, link to the discount, name
- Select segments to use with the coupon
- Coupon service generates serialized coupon codes
- [optional] The coupon service sends the serialized coupon codes to POS or ERP system
- Select the same segment from step 1
- Select the coupon from step 2
- In the journey designer, connect to the coupon services to select the personalized serialized coupon code.
- Execute the journey in CI-J
- Redeem coupon in store
- Validate the serialized coupon code (date, previous usage, context*)
- Coupon analytics in CI-D
- By customer coupon delivery and usage across multiple campaigns / journey
- Coupon delivery and usage within a single campaign / journey
Conclusion
This solution design enables businesses to provide seamless experience to corporate users across multiple applications while also providing a personalized customer journey experience to their customers.
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