The coupon, which offered 40 per cent off wine or champagne, first appeared on the website of South African wine Stormhoek, on November 24. Although it was intended only for Stormhoek’s customers, it was then passed around through emails, blogs and chatrooms.

“The 40 per cent off voucher went viral and it seems that anyone in the UK who drinks has one,” according to a posting by the wine company on its website.

It offered the discount on purchases of up to £500 from November 30 until December 10 at Threshers, Wine Rack, Bottoms Up, Haddows and The Local chains. Customer demand crashed the Threshers website but the coupon was still honoured at the store.

Roger Whiteside, chief operating officer at Thresher Group, said the offer was “an outstanding success,” for both Threshers and its customers.

“When we made the offer, we did not expect quite such a response but the wine literally flew off the shelves” he said in December. “For our customers, based on an increase of 60 per cent in sales in many areas, it looks like being a very merry Christmas. For Threshers, we have won many thousands of new customers and, with so many more bottles selling at a positive margin, it is all making for an excellent end of the year for us too.”

But Robert Jack, commercial director at Valassis, which processes 85 per cent of the UK's coupons, warned that underestimating distribution of such an offer could have negative consequences.

“An unplanned take-up of this kind has the potential to pose a threat of similar proportions to the free air travel promotion that brought down Hoover UK in the 1990s,” he said. “However, the campaign did strongly highlight one thing - the enduring appeal of the coupon. The Thresher coupon certainly achieved a massive sales uplift and in this way at least was a roaring success.”

Earlier this year, coffee giant Starbucks was forced to withdraw an emailed offer of free iced coffee to a limited number of US employees and their friends and families after the coupon was forwarded beyond the original intended audience.

Other UK retailers such as Selfridges, Dorothy Perkins and Gap, have done their own email and online coupon campaigns, many offering discounts of 30 to 40 per cent.

Reproduced with permission from http://www.incentivetoday.com/