Using Discounts the Smart Way in ClickFunnels

Welcome back to coaching corner with ClickFunnels. My name is Rob Schwartz and today we are going to be talking about discounts. I mean, it's that time of season, right, with Black Friday and Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's. Everybody is giving you as much off as you asked for. So we want to make sure that while you're building your funnels and while you're selling your things, we want to make sure that you know how to use discounts but not just use them, use them in the right way. And obviously I have to bring to the stage Tyson and David, who are here to help, who are here to help us with everything around discounts and show you how to put it together the right way, how to show it on your checkouts, where to promote it, who to give it to and how to make the most of it.

So yeah, yeah, we can also reinvent this a little bit. You know, discounts has a weird caveat where people think you're just like making things cheaper, but like not always. It's like the, it's almost like the initial little golden ticket to get people in the doorway and then you have the back end offers to kind of keep them supported, so.

Exactly.

Throw it out there.

Have you guys used discounts like recently? Have you bought anything around this time of year where the only reason, I mean was because there was a discount that you got in an email, right?

Yeah, 100%.

Absolutely.

Yeah. I just bought some waste, you know, the waist set, you know, on discount versus the ones that were not on discount.

There you go.

Because it was a Christmas sale. So there you go.

Right, there is this mouse that I've been wanting for quite a long time. I just haven't pulled the trigger on it. And then, you know, this discount offer shows up my email address or from my inbox for the same product and it was like 20% off. So yeah, I was going to buy it either way eventually, but they kind of like pushed me over the edge.

Yeah.

And now you're a customer and now they're going to sell you some other stuff and they'll get bigger discount. If you have bought something recently and you only bought it because you got a discount, put that in the chat. I want to know who has bought something recently because. Because they received a discount in an email. Right, Let us know. I think.

Yeah, I've actually got a load a list of video games in my, in my Steam account that I bought just on sale and I'm like, oh, I can't that. And they're just like in queue waiting for me to play them because I couldn't mess up.

The discount is an evil genius when it comes to the discounts, too. They're. I mean, they use it nicely with like the springtime, I don't know, turn of the seasons. Like, they have a really big discount sale going on usually every year, and it makes it hard not to buy. Like, you're like, looking at the price. You're like.

Exactly.

I guess.

Okay, all right. I guess now, now's the time.

Because it really is that. It's that push over the edge, right. If. If I've been like itching to buy something, I'll tell you right now, I need to buy Mario Kart for Switch. Okay. And I'm just waiting for some type of discount. Is not going to give me a discount.

They never do.

Never. And it's like 90 bucks.

Yeah. Good luck, man. Let me know if you find it.

I'll get one for my brother or something. But if I. If they gave me like even a 10% discount, I'd probably buy it. They'd probably raise the price to 100, give me a 10% discount. So I paid the original.

But it's emotionally satisfying either way. Yeah, I get what you're saying.

Exactly. So in case. If you didn't know, ClickFunnels has an in house discount app. Okay. We actually have a whole section to add several different apps and we'll show you those today. And just in case you didn't know, the discounts is a part of that. So it is all in house and it's all under the same roof and it's very easy to work with and it's awesome and it's great. And we're going to show you all about it today. Okay. So discount codes clarity here in this video, right?

Heck, yeah.

All right.

Awesome. What I'm getting so far from what you've said is that it's really, really awesome. It's great.

It is really awesome. Yes. All right, let's dive in. Without further ado, here we go. Okay, so the discount app. The discount app lets you create promo codes that can be applied to products and order bumps or upsells or entire orders and even subscriptions or more granularly, they could be applied to just the first. The first payment and a person's subscription. And we'll show you all that today. Now, when used intentionally, they act as decision making tools to help the right people to move forward with confidence and with urgency. Right. It adds a little bit of scarcity and urgency to your offers. So what it can be used for, it can be used to reduce hesitation, not to not value, create urgency without pressure. They're great for reactivating stalled buyers. Yes. So anytime that you have a discount that you have applied to one of your products, then be sure and email your list because like we talked about, who have you had to provide a product because you noticed that you got an email that said, hey, that product that you put on your wish list is now on sale, literally yesterday. Exactly. Go buy it.

Right.

So yes, now is the time to be creating those discounts and sending out emails, discounted for sale emails to your list. They can be used to increase your average order value and they align perfectly with seasonal buying behavior. That's why we're talking about them right now. Because Christmas is a rally corner this next week. Right.

And New Year. New Year, New me. Which means new because you need a gym membership, you need the supplements, you need the, you need the equipment. David already got a workout set.

Like I'm good to go.

Move.

Yeah, I got one of those adjustable workout sets.

There you go.

It's already Hanukkah. So if you're celebrating Hanukkah, we're four days in.

True, true.

Go get it.

True.

Yeah, and actually it's next Wednesday. You're not going to see us here on Coach quarter. It's Christmas Eve, so we're not going to be here. Um, Merry Christmas to everyone out there celebrating Christmas. But yeah, we wanted to get you this video time in a timely manner so that you can create some discounts for your Christmas sales and for your New Year, New Me type sales. New Year's is always a great time for New Year's resolutions. People getting back in shape, people wanting to eat healthier, people wanting to work out more, you know, people wanting to increase just their overall life quality.

So for Christmas, you got the last minute buyers on New Year's Eve. Like there's people out there still shopping on that day. Yeah, I'm sure there's, I don't know the stat. There's got to be a stat around, specifically people that purchase their gifts on, on the day before Christmas, Christmas Eve. And like they give you a picture of the image, the product. You know, you could be that person. It's okay. Whoever, whoever it is that's looking by your product could be that person.

Exactly. So just to help your mindset a little bit, reframing discounts in your mind, it's not always about just lowering the price. It's really about Lowering the friction to help them make the decision faster. Okay. Because whenever somebody knows that the real price, the all time normal price, is $300 and now they can get it for $200, they're going to want to buy it just because, oh my gosh, you know, they're wanting this thing anyways. All right, you get the idea. You all know how discounts and sales work.

I think we gotta, I think we got it. I think we got a good layout here. All right.

Lay of the land.

Okay, so let's dive in discounts, shall we? How do we even get started with discounts?

Oh, yeah.

So if you, if you don't see it over here on your left hand side of your clickfunnels back office, you're going to find it up here in Add Apps. Okay. And for those of you that don't know, this is a little plus icon and it's for Add Apps. Okay, we're going to dive in there and we're going to scroll down until we find discounts. Mine already says added because I've already created some discounts. So we're going to dive in. It's going to look like this and we're going to go to discounts.

It's going to say Add discount there or Add app versus the button that you saw on David. Correct.

And it'll look like this.

There we go. No, actually I, I also see the same thing. So that's why the screen looks like that. Yeah, but for everybody else who does not have it added, it'll say add apps or learn more. Just click on.

Exactly.

Add Apps.

There's a nice video from Todd there. Be sure and watch that.

There you go. Okay, take it away. Sorry, sorry.

You're good, you're good, you're good. All right, so I've already created some, so let me dive in and show you some of those. Okay. Here's one for Black Friday. And all you do is you just type in the name up at the top, you type the actual coupon code. The capitalizations do apply. So if you have a one capital letter and the next letter is not capital, then that will actually matter. So my suggestion is just do all of them in all caps.

Okay.

Maybe give yourself something to remember how, how big of a discount it is or what it is referring to. Yeah, yeah, I would recommend that.

I've seen a lot of people like that for like seasons. They do like summer 20 or something like that. And it's like a 20% discount for, I don't know, summer vacation or Something.

Yeah. And then you can give it a percentage off and you have different selections. Let me go ahead and go through and create a new one just to show you what all that looks like.

With the coupon code. Also, it's smart to use the season and the year so they don't come next year. And try to use it if it says summer, you know, or Christmas 2024, and you try to use it in the 25. In 25. And then you're like, why isn't this working? And they reach out to support. I mean.

That'S a good one. Yeah. Plus then you know how many you can segment easier too, if that's the case. Like who took you up on an offer for last year versus this year?

Exactly. Yeah. Very nice.

That just make a lot easier to. To manage the long term.

So here's one I'm creating. I'll go ahead and create one for next year's Black Friday. So my coupon code is going to be PDF for Black Friday 2026. So I'll just put 26 there and then we're going to do this. We're at 60 off. Okay. Now you do have options here. You could either keep it as the standard default, which is percentage, or you could select a specific dollar amount, which is nice.

I'm so glad they added that.

Yeah, I know you asked me that one a lot. Whenever it first came out.

It was a. It has been a while. I know when I was actually, I had a smile as soon as I got that email.

Yes, yes, yes. So next part is you can change it to be either to all products or just specific products or a specific collection of products. Okay. So once you create collections over here in your products, then they will start to populate here.

All right.

And then obviously, as you create products, they will start to show up here as well.

Okay, nice.

Now schedule the discounts. Okay. The caveat. Just one thing to know about, you know, discounts, they are tied to stripe and Payments AI pretty tightly. So like whenever you create a discount, you can't go in and change the actual percentage amount or the scheduled date.

So.

So let me show you the examples of that. So if we go back to the Black Friday one, I can't change how much it is because it's already created. Okay. That discount code was already created over in stripe and payments AI in the backside. Okay. And then for a.

If you create a discount and you have one connected and not the other, when you connect the other gateway, it should populate these discounts. If it Doesn't I would recreate it just to be safe.

Yeah, yeah, good point.

And then here's an example of what it looks like whenever you schedule one out. I've already scheduled it here and you could either expire it here or just let it expire on its own. So like if you wanted to end it early, you could. But just note that whenever you create it, you can't change it. All right.

Yeah, let's see. But based off what, what Rob was mentioning, like having the, you know, season the end the year for the discount, like, I don't know, have discounts set up as a, in a strategic way in a sense that they're not all, all time anyways. You probably want to only want to do it for a specific season, a specific time. So that way it's not like you are constantly discounting your offers all the time. People catch on to that. So having a strategic play where it's only on a given date range is still going to be beneficial.

Yes.

So create a new one. Isn't. Isn't the end of the world. It's. It's probably a good thing at the end.

Exactly. Okay, so now let me go through and show you what it looks like whenever we actually schedule it out. And to go to November next year. And this is going to be basically midnight to December. Let's go all the way through till the end of the year.

Okay.

To call that 11 to 5. The end. Very good. Now you can have this be to set it to apply to all orders or to, to just. So do not apply to all invoices for an order. So this is a coupon discount that you would want to give to somebody that, that you don't want to apply to every single invoice if it's a subscription product. But if you just wanted to give it a discount on that first subscription payment, then it would be here. So maybe, maybe if you wanted to just discount the first payment, you would say one or the first two payments or the first three or whatever you want.

Think about the power of this. Like you can get somebody to join your subscription, whatever, and give them 50% off their first subscription. But now they're subscribed, right? You gave them a 50% discount on their first invoice. So you've got them as a new subscriber and it gives them more time to actually test your product at a cheaper rate, which is awesome. And then that doesn't mean you're discounting the rest of the invoices moving forward. It's Only that first one. So they, they feel like they're getting this like special price to try out the platform. They fall in love with it and then they move up and they start paying normal price. So that one is a really, really powerful discount to use.

Yeah. And then you can also require a minimum spend. So if you are running a store, then you can require like, you know, let's say that you have to spend a minimum of $50 in order to get, you know, half off or free shipping. 20% off. Free shipping or something like that. Free shipping is a slightly different setting.

I. Sorry, my brain, as soon as you said that went to free shipping. But that's.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sorry everybody.

It's all good.

Yeah.

Let's see. Let's read this here. Stripe does not support the minimum spin option in this feature. If this feature is available, whereas is enabled, the discount code work correctly for stripe transactions. Okay, so make sure that you got Payments AI installed.

Yeah, and this goes back to what we were saying before is, you know, we, we're not the payment processor. You have to use Payments AI or Stripe to actually run your checkout. Right. So they kind of dictate what our feature set can be here for at the moment. And that little disclaimer there was just this works on Payments AI, not on stripe. So if anybody's curious about that, that's the reason that disclaimer is there.

Yeah, it's how important for Payments AI. I guess check it out. Makes life a little bit nicer.

It's super good.

Frictionless.

You can, you can find that in your, in your ad app section. It'll come down here, look like that. But the last point here is that you can limit it to one per customer. Okay, super cool. So now let's go over to a funnel and show you how to set it up and what it looks like. So what I would recommend that you do is somewhere on the page, have the code. So you would copy that code from your discounts area, put it on here, and then tell them what to do, enter the code, blah, blah, blah, for 50% off. Put that on there somewhere. Because it's not automatically added into the, the actual summary discount code section. That would be like a custom code thing if you wanted to do that. All right, so now you can have it either as two step, one step, whatever this you want. But what I recommend to do here is to by default have the order summary expanded by default. Okay. And then you have to enable discounts, the coupon field. Okay, so let me do that. Again, you'll find that here in order. Summary. Okay, let's click on that, make sure that it's expanded by default. And then we have to enable the coupons.

I like the expanded by default option too, just because it doesn't have to search for it. I've gotten people reach out to me after implementing that because I sent out an email specifically for. It's like a $10 off situation or something and they couldn't find it. So that was before that feature was actually rolled out, I believe.

Yes.

And so it made it a lot easier. I didn't. I haven't gotten a question on it since. I'll say, which is lovely.

Now here's a. Here's a cool thing.

I want to give just a quick disclaimer on discounts in general because somebody told this to me once and I was like, man, you're right. Like, that is a little bit of something that you have to be aware of when you offer a discount code. And I'm curious how many of you watching do this. How many people go search for better discount codes?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

You know Chrome extensions out there for this?

Yeah, there's tons of Chrome extensions. But it's just like it was something that was said to me once and I feel like I have to say it here, but it's just like, be careful with your discount codes and when you offer them and how you offer them and the messaging around it, maybe you even say there's no better code out there.

Right.

He's the one right there. But.

Don'T waste your time looking for better codes.

Exactly. That's super smart. I have not thought about doing that. That's a good idea.

Like, make sure the messaging around it is really straightforward and concrete and tell them this is a special code just for you. Because people will go look for other codes, they'll type it into Google, they'll try to go to Reddit or whatever it is or use one of these Chrome extensions. So when you're doing this, just. Just understand the power you're giving the people, but just know that people might go search for other places. So just have that. Have, you know, the. The copy or under. Be super strong or it's just like, this is the best deal ever.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cool. Now, a couple of cool things that you can do. There is a dedicated order summary element. And so whenever you add that, like, let's say that you wanted to have. It's very common to have the actual checkout order form on one side of the page and then the summary on the right side of the page. And whenever you do that, it actually moves the summary from here over to there. Now it's showing here just because we're in the editor, but live on the page, I believe that actually goes away. So that does still take on the settings from here. Okay, so super cool. Let me show you that real quick. And let's just go here and do a refresh. Boom.

Boom.

So there's that. And the order summary is not down there because we moved it over there. Oh, cool.

All right, copy this all in one area.

Boom. We're going to take this, copy that, paste it there and apply it. And there you go. There's 50% off.

Cool, cool. It works. It just works.

For order bumps.

You can do it for like anything on the page. Doesn't have to be all the products. Maybe it's like only a specific one checkout that you want to contribute to. You know, use it. Use it as you see fit, strategically.

Yeah. Another way that you can do it to remind people to add the coupon code. What you can do is actually come down here right above the summary, and you can click to add a paragraph and basically copy and paste what you got here as another place to remind them of what to do. Okay. How cool is that?

Nice.

Now, with that, you can obviously make it bigger, any size that you want. You can add a background and really make it stand out.

I like that a lot. Because people will search the page again to find this code. Yeah, right. So if you have it right here, that's. That's great.

Yes.

I want to address a question in the comments from Dan. In Stripe or Payments AI, how do we see if the discount code was created and working? So I believe in Stripe. I know in Stripe it will be created on Stripe. So you can log into your Stripe account and see the discount code created there. Payments AI, I don't know if they actually have UI or if they actually expose the discounts that are created on that end or. Or it's just. You'll only see it in Click Funnels. What I would say, though, is manage your discounts within Click Funnels. I wouldn't create discounts on Stripe and want to use them in clickfunnels. It just. It makes more sense to do everything in one place. So you'll see it working because you'll see the discount on the order. And David, if you're about to do that, awesome. So you'll see it all here. But I wouldn't go into Stripe and try to manage your discounts. Just do it in ClickFunnels.

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. You'll know that it's working because it's in clickfunnels and it. It's created. Right. There we go.

All right. Really taking down the veil for that one. I like that.

You know it, buddy.

Yeah. Just based off of the payment gateway that you have already created. If you. Or you have connected to the actual platform, if you're. Are you doing the actual test transaction?

I'm about to, yes.

Okay. But yeah, it'll show it on the actual customer profile as well. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, cool. It'll work right out the gates. Same with Stripe. The only thing with Stripe that you had to be aware of was that once customer or no, it was the minimum amount. So if you want to use that feature, you have to use Payments AI yet at this moment in time, unless Strike wants to get. I don't know, they want to open up that.

When you're watching.

I don't know.

Yeah, Things might change when you're watching this. In a week or two, everything, the whole world is changing so fast forwards.

Open all the time. You know, you never know up so fast.

Let's see. All right, so let's go ahead and make that test purchase here. Okay.

Oh, is this a new, like, gaming system that has thousands of games?

Yes.

Did you create a funnel for us?

Yeah, it's on Zim Drop, everyone. Just so you know.

I'm buying this.

Yeah. Leave that discount code for us. Yeah.

Go for it. It's only 111 at this point. All right, perfect.

On Zendrop. That's awesome.

Yeah. Okay.

That's where you do your holiday shopping. It's on Zendrop.

Okay. Got that codified already. Very good. And here we go.

Look at all those happy customers.

Yeah. It's so funny, whenever I see any kind of a sale or product come out, I always go check zendrop because most likely it's there. And here on the order confirmation, it shows the discount applied. Cool.

Sweet.

That's pretty nice.

Very cool.

Right to the point. I mean, I don't know. So far. I don't think it gets much simpler than that. It was like three clicks. We had a discount created. We went in and actually set up inside of a funnel for the checkouts. That's all we did, actually. It works. That's it. I don't know.

So, David, let's go over back to the discount and show them some of the stats around it. So if we refresh it.

Let's see. Was this the right one? No, this was the different one. So let's create that discount. Oh, we actually use that.

We already used you just the same discount code you used.

Yeah, just go back to.

Yeah, true. Okay.

So even here, if you stop right here. Right. Or you can go into it. Yeah, right here. Exactly. If you stop here, you can see exactly how many times the discounts were used, which is really, really nice. And then when you click into it, when you can see who used the discount.

Super cool.

I think that's awesome. If you want to create diff. I mean, this is a good way also to just test where your customers are actually using discounts and engaging with your content or the things that you're sending to them. If you want to create an email discount or a website discount or a Facebook discount, you can see where people are coming in and which discount they're actually using.

Yeah, very nice.

Is. Is really engaging. It actually wants those sales.

Yep, very cool. And you can always expire a discount if you would like to at any point.

Yeah.

What if it's converting too? Well, you know, and you're like, geez, okay, well then you raise your price. I know, I know. Raise the price. Oh, man.

Raise the price.

Discount. Raise the price.

But it's just a great way to like, again, like we were saying, just pay. Get people to just jump off, not jump off the ledge. That's a terrible analogy. Just like climb over the fence or just make that your purchase.

You're standing there with your arm out and they have to. They have to make that jump, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

Take the step.

There's no fall. It's just a step, you know?

Exactly. Yeah. And so to kind of recap on some of those points that we made, just be sure that your. I would recommend that your coupon code is in all caps. That way as to not make it confusing for your people. Be sure and add it to your Somewhere on the page for them to copy and paste it. Make sure that your summary is expanded by default and you have enabled the coupons in there. Okay. And that's about all the tips as far as I contain.

Are you able to show it in the contact profile, like the discount negotiate?

I think it shows them the order. If you go to the order that you just generated, it should show the discount on the order.

Yes, it does that. Let me go check. See that for you.

But let us know in the chat if you're actually. If you are using discounts, how are you using it? If you have special discounts for this holiday season.

Yeah. Right.

Let us know because we built this because you guys asked for it and we think it's pretty cool. So.

Yeah. Move forward with confidence. Strat, Dan. Thanks.

There you go. Not to go.

Yep. Yes.

You know what?

I like that.

We need to reframe it next time.

Yeah.

I don't know why John Buff jumps in the head first. Like that's the first thing I think of as well. But I would move forward with confidence, Dan.

Now I. I think you can actually give somebody a discount after they've place. Placed the order as well too. Let me go check on that.

You can give them a discount after the fact.

I think so. Let me go check on that. I can be wrong.

It's not.

I could be wrong. I've been wrong once before, but only once.

You said it twice today. I don't know.

I think if you give a discount after the fact and they've paid, then you'd have to give them some sort of refund. I think you can give them a discount on a subscription. Like a pending invoice. Yes.

In the future.

Exactly. In the future.

Let me go see what other test purchases I've made. Well, just back.

Yeah, I think the refund itself, I mean, if you want to. If you want to.

Okay.

For subscriptions don't make sense if you're trying to like as like a recovery situation. Right. Maybe someone's trying to like cancel a subscription. I've seen that offered many times as a, like the, the cancel funnel workflow. You have a discount for a few months of that subscription.

Absolutely. Cool. Well, yeah, again, while David is trying to pull this up, I just want to thank again everybody for joining. We do these for the community and if you, if there's anything within clickfunnels that you want to know more about, please let us know. We're happy to do a session in it, tell you about strategies around it, how to use it in clickfunnels, how to connect it and certain ways that maybe you haven't thought about. So please send us an email to outreach clickfunnels.com we're very open to new suggestions and what to do next because again, this is community driven content.

Yes, we may or may not talk about some things we can use alongside clickfunnels. Who knows, things that you might want to use. I don't know. Who knows in the future episode here? I can't say, can't confirm, but who knows?

Who knows? Just. We just want to make things easier for you. All right, well, if. If David does find it eventually in the new year, well, we will share it with everybody. All good.

It's not working on a product that has. That's been out of stock, so. Oh, yeah, I'm not seeing what I normally see. All right, well, yeah, we may have to skip that for this video.

It's okay.

It's all good, guys.

All right.

Thanks for hanging out with us today. Appreciate it. Yeah, as Robert mentioned, reach out to us if you have questions. We're happy to hop on a call.

With you one on one.

We'll talk to you live. We're real people over here, if you believe it. Believe it or not, you know, we are sitting over here in the flesh, and we would be happy to hop on a call with you and answer your questions as well. But otherwise, have a fantastic day, guys. Have a fantastic week, happy holidays, and we'll catch you in the next one. Yeah. Sound good?

Sounds good, everyone.

All right, guys, Bye. Check you later.