Normally the retailer is specific about the amount of money off each product, however recently we've noticed that some businesses are sending emails with 'mystery' discount coupons, which basically means you don't know how much the discount is for.
Yesterday Dell sent one of these emails, which attempts to lure you in with the offer a discount that could be anything from 10% to 50%. The problem is you only find out what the discount is once you get to the checkout.
The mysterious coupon is presumably supposed to make the customer so curious that they can't help but click on the call-to-action on the off chance they are rewarded a half price laptop, but personally I find it to be an incredibly annoying offer.
It's not difficult to find decent offers online at this time of year, so as a consumer what this suggests to me is that Dell isn't offering great discounts so has to hide behind 'mystery coupons'.
And it's made worse by the amount of time it takes before the discount is finally revealed...
Step one
After clicking the call-to-action you land on the homepage to be shown a range of business laptops and another voucher code offering an additional £40 off purchases of more than £499.
This is a decent discount on top of the code I've already been sent, and slightly lessens the blow of not knowing how much my email code is worth.
Step two
Having chosen a Vostro Notebook 3560 I'm linked to the product page, which displays a confusing arrays of font sizes and colours.
That aside, the next step is to customise my Vostro...
Steps three to six
Now to build my laptop. In fairness, allowing users to choose the spec for their laptop is key to Dell's success, but I'd be much happier answering all these questions if I knew the actual cost of my new computer.
Step seven
I've made it to the checkout. The excitement is building. Dell has already given me free shipping and £60 off this Vostro model, and now I can actually enter my 'mystery' code and find out the full extent of my discount.
And the discount is.... 10% off. This doesn't come as a surprise, and isn't the sort of discount that would be enough to entice me to buy from Dell above a different retailer.
I guess Dell assumes that once the customer gets to this stage they're not really worried about the level of discount, but if I was genuinely on the hunt for a bargain and had taken the time to fill in all those forms properly I would be incredibly frustrated with this outcome.
In conclusion...
Hidden or 'mystery' discounts are a strange tactic, as it suggests that the amount of money off isn't worth shouting about and wastes the customers time.
Dell's purchase process isn't short, and for good reason, which makes the use of mystery discount codes even stranger, particularly as the level of discount might impact the different add-ons they go for.
Research shows that hidden delivery costs are one of the main causes of basket abandonment because people want to know upfront what they're paying. Therefore hiding the discount until the seventh step out of 10 in the purchase journey seems counterintuitive.
Admittedly this discount was offered in a B2B email and I haven't noticed it in B2C emails, so it might be that business customers are less price sensitive.
Even so, it's still a frustrating way of offering customers a discount, and in my opinion the number of customers who are delighted with their 50% discount is likely to be far outweighed by customers who become annoyed and abandon their purchase when their 10% discount is finally revealed.
Have you ever used mystery discounts? Did you have any success? Let us know in the comments below.
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