Ideas to Distribute Back to School Coupons to Boost Sales in 2023

Corinna Keefe
Corinna Keefe
Parents and kids are getting ready for a new school year, shopping around for school supplies and back to school essentials. Try these 6 Back to School promotion ideas to run a top-of-the-class marketing and sales campaign.

If you’re considering a campaign to distribute Back to School coupons for your 2023 marketing campaign, then you already know that Back to School shopping is big business. In 2022 customers spent over 36 billion dollars, according to the National Retail Federation. With so much money being spent, shoppers are keen to find special offers, sales, and Back to School discount coupons.

The benefits of such campaign frange from providing a short-term sales boost, to using coupons to collect customer data. It is also a great product promotion strategy and way to connect and engage with your audience. That includes priceless intel such as contact details, shopping habits, tastes, preferences, and more.

Back to School Marketing

And you can make it fun at the same time! Read on to find out how – with these ideas on how to distribute Back to School coupons.

How to distribute Back to School discounts through coupons and promotional codes

Before we dive into the fun part (designing your promotions), let’s talk about how coupons work.

Creating coupons is as easy as using the Easypromos platform. The first step is to upload your set of coupons. After that, you will have to decide how they will be redeemed. When it comes to the coupons, you can choose the format. You can offer coupons as an instant download when users sign up or send them via email. And you can choose whether to share codes in alphanumericbarcode, or QR code format.

Once participants have received their coupon, they will have to validate it. If the coupons are to be used online, a simple alphanumeric code will do. However, if the coupons are to be redeemed at the physical point of sale, Easypromos offers two ways of doing it.

  • Using the “Validation Portal”: Participants show the alphanumeric code or QR code to the shop assistant who then validates it.
  • Coupon validation via participants’ mobile phones. With this option, participants can redeem their coupon or prize at the shop and validate it themselves using the slider button in the promotion app.

Give your coupon campaign a sense of urgency by incorporating a deadline to redeem the coupon featuring a countdown of the time left to redeem it.

Boost sales with a Back to School coupon campaign

Let’s start with the easiest way to distribute Back to School coupons because there’s nothing easier than sharing your contact details and downloading a discount voucher! The Back to School shopping season is when your customers are looking out for deals and special offers.

Here’s an example of a simple Coupon campaign that can be designed by any brand associated with Back to School shopping. All you have to do is share your promotion with your social media followers and website visitors and ask them to fill in a registration form in order. In return, they will obtain a discount for their Back to School shopping.

Back to School Coupons Campaign

This simple type of promotion helps to boost sales, drive traffic to your website and footfall to your store, and also expand your mailing list for future marketing purposes. You also have a great opportunity to establish meaningful customer relationships by giving away discounts to your store.

Try our Back to School Distribute Coupon Codes DEMO to get a feel of the user experience for yourself.

Gamify your Back to School campaign and reward participants with discounts

Online users love playable promotions; it might be because they provide entertainment, or maybe because they’re a quick escape from reality. Incentivizing participation is an effective way to attract more potential participants and the prize is normally the biggest motivation to enter online campaigns. However, you don’t necessarily have to raffle big prizes; if the main objective of your Back to School strategy is to boost sales you might as well give away discount codes to all participants of your marketing game!

back to school puzzle

Here’s an example of a branded Puzzle game that can be launched by ANY brand as part of their Back to School strategy. But instead of providing just a simple registration form, you can invite users to rearrange puzzle pieces that – when put together correctly – reveal an image of your best-selling products, your slogan or even your campaign poster!

However, instead of raffling a big product bundle, you can reward all registered participants with a Back to School coupon! Apart from boosting sales, you also get to generate engagement and contact details for your brand.

Did you know that all Easypromos games can be fully customized? Edit the texts, add your logo and change the design to reflect your branding – it’s a simple way to reinforce brand awareness and recall.

Make sure to try our Back to School Puzzle DEMO, and if you like this Back to School promotion idea use our ready-made template to launch your own game with a discount coupon.


Raffle Back to School vouchers among registered users

Sharing Back to School coupons with shoppers is a great way to make them loyal to your brand. They’ll feel valued, appreciated, and understood. And chances are, they’ll think of your brand next time they have to purchase something that you sell or offer.

There are direct advantages for your marketing strategy, too. You can use discount coupons as a powerful motivation for customers to share information or try specific products. The Easypromos Back to School Entry Form Giveaway app can also be a great tool whenever looking to collect more information about customers. If you raffle a specific product, you know that all the people that participate in your promotion would like to try it! Or, like in the following example, all the participants that enter your promotion have school-age children.

Back to School Entry Form Giveaway

Here’s an example, aimed at parents of kids heading back to school. This brand offered a £50 Back to School voucher for school uniforms. All the entrants had to do was fill in their personal details.

Apart from expanding their mailing list, the organizer reinforced their brand awareness and tapped into customers’ loyalty. They also knew which leads could be targeted with school and kid-themed communications in the future!

Survey your customers to help plan your campaign

Did the previous example of collecting info from your followers sound interesting? There is a way to find out even more about your existing and potential customers! Launch a Survey promotion to get even more details from your leads. You can ask targeted questions about how your customers shop, what products they prefer, how they feel about your brand and more.

By offering Back to School coupons to all contestants, you’ll incentivize more customers to take part. And the more responses to your survey, the more useful it is!

For this type of promotion, we’ve picked an unusual example. Here’s a survey that was run by a school itself!

Back to School promotion ideas: screenshot of a landing page from a Back to School quiz.

While the School Board prepared for the new school year, they wanted to know more about students’ and parents’ opinions. They asked families to fill in the survey together because the focus was on learning how to help the community. And the prize? Two generous $100 vouchers for groceries.

Launching a Survey as part of your Back to School campaign is a great idea if you’re looking to conduct market research. The participants will be more likely to share their views and opinions if they receive a coupon that’ll help them save money during the Back to School shopping season.

It’s easy to validate coupons in-store and online with the Easypromos Validation Portal. Create unique promotional codes and assign them to individual customers.

Challenge your followers to a pop quiz and give away Back to School coupons

Set up a Knowledge Quiz to test your customers’ expertise in school subjects, your products or your company. This is also a great opportunity to educate customers about your brand, and collect customer details. Don’t forget to reward correct answers with Back to School discount coupons. To attract more participants, you can also raffle a big prize among all participants that correctly answered all the questions.

Back to School discounts with a Knowledge Quiz Promotion

In the example above, you can see how a fun example of a Spanish Knowledge Quiz. Participants tested their Spanish skills and after registering their contact details they obtained a 30% discount off Spanish classes in a private language school.

Give this Back to School Knowledge Quiz DEMO a try and test how to use it for your brand.

Class is over – time to try these promotions out for yourself! Remember, it’s free to set up an Easypromos account and start drafting your promotions. We can’t wait to see all the fun and creative ways you’ll share your Back to School coupons.

If you need extra inspiration or resources for your Back to School campaign, then make sure to visit our Back to School hub. In case of doubts or questions don’t hesitate to Chat with us!