You can offer discounts in many of the way you offer coupons – in fact, you can position your Discount as a “Coupon Code" and call it a coupon.

It would look like this in your email:

Enter this coupon code at checkout to save $10 on your purchase – that's a whole 50% OFF – but only until December 15.

Coupon Code: WHOPPAH

Discount: $10 off

And you can offer these types of discounts right within simple text emails.

But how to create the code so that it will work on checkout?

You need to know that PayPal doesn't currently allow you to create discount codes within PayPal. You need to have your own Shopping Cart – for example, 2Checkout, which works in conjunction with PayPal and other payment processors – and create the code there.

When people go to pay, they see a message like this on your Shopping Cart page:

They simply type in your code – “WHOPPAH" in our example – and are taken to PayPal or whatever they've selected, to complete the purchase.

If you do decide on a discount offer, do offer it out of appreciation for existing subscribers. It works best when positioned as a treat for the faithful – that way, it doesn't cheapen your services or products and boosts their value in the mind of your recipients.