Managing Customer Coupons

Gameball’s Couponing Engine gives businesses a powerful way to reward, retain, and re-engage customers. Coupons can be distributed as part of loyalty programs, triggered by automations, awarded when reaching a tier, or even created manually by the business.

This guide walks through the end-to-end lifecycle of managing coupons in real-world scenarios:

Retrieving a customer’s available and historical coupons.
Validating and locking a coupon at checkout.
Burning a coupon once it has been used.

By following this flow, you can create a seamless customer experience while keeping full control of coupon eligibility and usage.

Why This Matters for Businesses

Coupons are more than just discounts—they are engagement tools. They can:

Encourage repeat purchases and increase customer lifetime value.
Incentivize behaviors such as signing up, referring a friend, or completing a challenge.
Reward loyal customers with exclusive perks.
Drive seasonal campaigns (e.g., “SUMMER20” or “Black Friday Sale”).
Allow targeted offers like free shipping or product-specific discounts.

The key challenge businesses face is tracking and controlling coupon usage. Without proper controls, coupons may be overused, misused, or applied in unintended ways. Gameball solves this by providing clear data points like usage limits, customer-specific limits, and live validation.

1. Retrieve Customer Coupons

To show a customer all their coupons—both active and historical—you can use:

GET https://api.gameball.co/api/v4.0/integrations/customers/{customerId}/coupons

This endpoint allows you to build a “My Coupons” page or section inside your app or website.

What You’ll Get

Coupons the customer earned by redeeming points.
Coupons won from campaigns or by reaching new tiers.
Manually created coupons (if enabled).
Coupons that have already expired or been used (still visible for transparency).

Each coupon object includes important usage metrics:

usageLimit → Maximum times the coupon can be used across all customers.
limitPerCustomer → Maximum times a single customer can use it.
usedCount → How many times the coupon has been used globally so far.
customerUsedCount → How many times this customer has used it.
isAvailableToUse → Whether this customer can currently apply the coupon.

This helps you not just display the coupon, but explain to customers why it is or isn’t available.

Example Response

{
  "coupons": [
    {
      "code": "WELCOME100",
      "value": 100,
      "type": "Fixed Discount",
      "usageLimit": 1,
      "limitPerCustomer": 1,
      "usedCount": 0,
      "customerUsedCount": 0,
      "isAvailableToUse": true
    },
    {
      "code": "SUMMER10",
      "value": 10,
      "type": "Percentage Discount",
      "usageLimit": 100,
      "limitPerCustomer": 1,
      "usedCount": 87,
      "customerUsedCount": 1,
      "isAvailableToUse": false
    }
  ]
}

👉 In this example:

WELCOME100 is fresh and ready to use.
SUMMER10 has already been used once by this customer, hitting their personal limit, so it is no longer available.

From a business perspective, this transparency helps reduce customer support inquiries like “Why can’t I use my coupon?” and improves trust.

2. Validate and Lock a Coupon

Once a customer enters a coupon code at checkout, you should validate that it is still active and eligible for use.

POST https://api.gameball.co/api/v4.0/integrations/coupons/{code}/validate

This step ensures:

The coupon hasn’t expired.
It meets minimum order value requirements.
The customer hasn’t exceeded their personal usage limit.
The coupon is still within its global usage limit.

You can also lock the coupon by setting lock = true. This temporarily reserves the coupon for the customer while they complete checkout. Locking is especially useful during:

Flash sales with limited coupon supply.
Exclusive promotions for VIP customers.
Any scenario where double-usage of a code must be avoided.

Example Request (with Lock)

curl -X POST "https://api.gameball.co/api/v4.0/integrations/coupons/WELCOME100/validate" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "apiKey: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "secretKey: YOUR_SECRET_KEY" \
  -d '{
        "customerId": "customer_123",
        "lock": true
      }'

Example Response

{
  "valid": true,
  "coupon": {
    "code": "WELCOME100",
    "value": 100,
    "type": "Fixed Discount",
    "isAvailableToUse": true
  },
  "lockReference": "f3ac814c-9131-456b-b6f1-abb9021cc2ef"
}

Here:

The coupon is valid and locked.
The system returns a lockReference that can be tied to the order.

3. Burn the Coupon

Once payment is completed, you need to burn the coupon to mark it as used.

POST https://api.gameball.co/api/v4.0/integrations/coupons/burn

Burning updates both the global usage count and the customer usage count.

Example Request

curl -X POST "https://api.gameball.co/api/v4.0/integrations/coupons/burn" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "apiKey: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "secretKey: YOUR_SECRET_KEY" \
  -d '{
        "customerId": "customer_123",
        "code": "WELCOME100"
      }'

This ensures that the coupon cannot be reused unless it still has remaining uses based on its usageLimit or limitPerCustomer.

End-to-End Business Flow

Let’s bring this together with a customer journey example:

Discovering Coupons → Sarah opens the loyalty app and sees all her available and past coupons using GET /customers/{customerId}/coupons.
- She sees that she has WELCOME100 (active) and SUMMER10 (already used).
Applying at Checkout → She decides to use WELCOME100. At checkout, your system calls POST /coupons/{code}/validate with lock = true.
- The system confirms it’s valid and locks it for Sarah.
Completing Payment → After Sarah successfully pays, your system calls POST /coupons/burn.
- The coupon is marked as used.
Post-Purchase Transparency → Next time Sarah visits “My Coupons,” she can clearly see that WELCOME100 was used.

This creates trust, avoids customer confusion, and ensures coupons are always applied fairly and consistently.

Key Takeaways

Coupons are powerful engagement and retention tools when managed correctly.
You can show both active and historical coupons for customer transparency.
Global and customer-specific usage limits (usageLimit, limitPerCustomer, usedCount, customerUsedCount) give businesses fine-grained control.
isAvailableToUse is your go-to flag for whether the coupon can be applied right now.
Validation and burning ensure coupons aren’t misused, while still giving customers a smooth redemption flow.

👉 By combining retrieval, validation, and burning, businesses can maximize the impact of coupons while minimizing risks, creating a loyalty strategy that is both customer-friendly and operationally secure.

PreviousAdjust Integration

Last updated 2 days ago