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How to Stop People from Sharing Discount Link?

by Thomas Strock
4 replies
Let's say I have an email list of 1000 people. I want to send these 1000 people a link to buy my product at a huge discount. However, I don't want them to be able to share the URL to the discount page with their friends or post it on any place online to avoid EVERYONE buying the product at the huge discount. Is there any way to do this? Thanks in advance for your help!
#coupon #discount #email #link #people #product #share #sharing #stop
  • Profile picture of the author GSX
    You could just make the link expire after a certain number of uses, adding a sense of urgency, a double whammy, make them act fast. Otherwise it would probably be tough to regulate considering any kind of guard you try and put in, they could most likely tell someone else how to get around it.

    Although one possibility would be making them confirm their email and only allow 1 email per code/discount, so in theory you're making 1000 coupon codes, but I'm not sure what kind of backend your dealing with, may be a huge hassle.

    Let me know what you end up doing I'd be interested!
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    • Profile picture of the author David-JP
      If they are already in the sales system you are using- like a membership system- you can require that they already have a "free membership" before they can use the coupon.

      If its for an unregistered list- not much you can do. Theres nothing unique about the people in the list and outside the list then.

      GSX's recommendation of a time limit/usage limit to add urgency is a good idea.

      David
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  • Profile picture of the author WillR
    In all honesty I think you are looking at this the wrong way. The best thing that could happen is people share the link with friends and post it online. It's free exposure for you.

    Whenever you set up discounts or coupons, whether it be for an online product or an offline business, you should always make the offer something that you could sustain if abused. That way you are more than happy to have people pass the coupon code around because you know you have your funnel in place once those people purchase and you will still make money off those people.

    Think of it as very cheap advertising to obtain new leads for your business.

    I think your time would be much better spent on recruiting more affiliates and the like rather than wasting it worrying about something like this over which you have no control anyway.
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  • Profile picture of the author TopicSpan
    I agree with WillR that it's a good idea, not a bad one.

    However, you could easily add an MD5 hash of their email address into the link (MD5 collisions are unlikely in such a small sample) and then just mark the email address as having used the coupon once they've clicked through that link and used the coupon.
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