Running promotions and offering deals from time to time is very common within the consumer space, and is sometimes a necessity in order for your business to succeed in case your brand pull isn’t large enough for the business to run without any types of deals or promotions. The most popular and highly successful deal and promotion types will therefore be outlined in this article, so that you know what to consider when pursuing certain campaigns throughout the year. Please note, what we cover here are the deal / promotions types and structures, and not the campaign theme’s themselves. For information about which types of campaigns you can run throughout the year and combined with some of the offer types that are outlined in this article, I suggest that you read the following article: ‘The Complete E-Commerce Marketing Calendar for 2022‘.
Percentage discount
A percentage discount is flexible; you may give a specific percentage value off of a particular product or the entire purchase. You can grab your consumers attention by using smaller percentage discount values (such as 10% off or more), while bigger discounts (think +50% off or more) are ideal for large sales seasons like Black Friday or to simply liquidating slow moving unsold items.
If you sell goods on your Shopify store, I recommend choosing between giving a percentage or dollar discount for each item. Use a percentage price reduction if the item you’re discounting originally costs less than $200. If it costs more than $200, use a dollar discount instead. This approach helps customers see the most value for their money.
Dollar value discount
Offering a dollar-value reduction, such as $10 off, may make customers feel like they’re receiving “free money” rather than simply saving it through a percentage discount. There is no doubt that adding strong discount values to your site can increase the conversion rate and the overall revenue value quite substantially.
You can either make the offer permanent or contingent on how much a customer spends, for example, by offering $10 off orders over $100 and $25 off orders over $150 at the same time. The latter approach may help you increase the average order value by encouraging consumers to put more items in their carts to receive a bigger discount.
It’s important to remember that such strong percentage or dollar value discount campaigns can reduce your margins significantly, and your brand is also at the risk of being diluted if the discount values are too large, and/or if the frequency of your discounted campaigns are too high.
Buy One, Get One – BOGO
The acronym BOGO stands for “buy one, get one.” A BOGO discount might be expressed as “Buy one, get one 50% off,” whereas another option is “Buy two shirts at full price and receive the third for $10.” This deal format encourages customers to buy additional items and spend more than they had initially intended.
Free gift with purchase
Another excellent approach to increase sales is to provide a free gift with purchase. For brands which are hesitant when it comes to offering discounts, this is an excellent way of increasing conversions by framing the “discount” as a gift with purchase – it is essentially the same as a BOGO campaign, just framed differently. Offering items as gifts is also a great method to sell unsold inventory. This present can be a mystery or something that is transparent when purchasing; however, according to studies published in the University of Miami, offering a mystery gift with purchase has the potential to boost the conversion rate even further compared to if the gift is presented upfront, in certain industries.
I recommend including a free present when a purchase minimum is met. This encourages consumers to add more products to their cart, thereby increasing the average order value of the purchase. Furthermore, the Journal of Marketing discovered that individuals who received a product for free discussed it 20% more than those who paid for it — this is essentially also free word of mouth advertising!
Free shipping
Free delivery can be one of the most successful kinds of deals, and something that I would almost always recommend to do – as a fixed strategy. One of the primary reasons customers abandon their carts before finishing checkout is because of high shipping fees. While many shops always provide a free shipping option, offering limited-time discounts on shipping charges as a special promotion for those who don’t may be a smart idea. You may as an example always have free delivery if a certain threshold is met, and the from time to time have free delivery on all orders, if the conversion rate is to be boosted further from time to time.
An interesting fact is that customers are more likely to accept a free shipping incentive than a $10 total purchase discount, even if the cost of delivery is less. Even if shipping charges are lower than $10, customers may find a free shipping deal more appealing, and if the free shipping is dependent on a certain order value, you may use this as an instrument to increase the average order value. Making sure you have the appropriate ecommerce fulfilment approach in place so that the experience of the free shipping is smooth for the customer. A bad shipping experience can often result in bad reviews, and ultimately also in the customer not returning even though the products expectations are met.
